Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A black blindfold is pulled down completely as inquisitive eyes stare up at the night sky. The bag of Momofuku hangs in one hand as Satoru Gojo watches, mouth slightly agape, at something happening that defies his understanding of the world that he lives in.

A few seconds ago, a massive surge of cursed technique seemingly rent the world itself, causing a sea of cursed energy to spill into the sky above Sendai, and then dissipate. In this, there was a light, something he couldn’t quite make out from as far as he was and as fast as it was moving, and as surrounded as it was in strange powerful cursed energy.

It emerged from this tear and sped down to a specific place at such a high rate of speed that even if it had been visible to a normal human eye, it would have been impossible to perceive.

The most unnerving thing about this magnificent and mysterious display of unknown wonder is that whatever emerged from the breech flew down to the ground very close to the location where his precious student was working on a training mission.

In an instant, he closes the distance, landing on a second-floor walkway that connected two buildings at a Sendai high school.

There is an absolute fucking monster within striking distance of his student, and Gojo takes a position between Megumi and the other sorcerer.

But that didn’t make any sense either.

Satoru had seen this kid while he was casually stalking Megumi earlier on this mission. The pink-haired teenager was easy to remember because he’d been doing some incredibly impressive stuff on the track field. His athleticism was at the level that would make a person who is a sorcerer take note of their physical prowess and see if there was anything up with them because he seemed unnaturally strong.

When Gojo looked at him with Six Eyes before, there was nothing. No cursed energy, no cursed technique, nothing. Now he’s got cursed energy that’s nearly off the charts, a dangerous technique, and just from his appearance to Gojo’s senses, he’d assume this kid was special grade for sure.

Yet he was standing there, staring at his hands, confused by his own power.

That just wasn’t how anything worked. People didn’t instantly get a technique. Well, it wasn’t impossible for that to happen actually, but when it did, it usually occurred under nefarious circumstances. Even if it did, it shouldn’t happen like this.

Yuji Itadori doesn’t have any idea what’s happening, only that he was fighting a monster, and he was about to do something…was it an object they were fighting over? And suddenly this power surged within him, and he just knew how to reach out and make the monster vanish.

This moment feels so strange, like something that happened a long time ago, and he has all these feelings. Yuji’s heart felt so happy when he saw the man with blue eyes and white hair, as if he is an old friend he hasn’t seen in a very long time. There is a name on the tip of his tongue, like he wishes to call out to his old friend that he has never met before.

Megumi is simply flabbergasted, as his version of the events is even odder. One minute, he and Yuji, an uncharacteristically brave civilian, were…going to do something? He remembers that he was panicking, and then suddenly, the cursed spirit was dead, and Yuji had this aura about him.

Gojo definitely saw something come out of the riff in the sky; something had entered this situation from somewhere else.

Did some entity enter the area by unknown means and possess this other kid?

Gojo leans in on Yuji, trying to see if there’s something in his body that’s not supposed to be there, but Yuji is all Yuji and no one else. Yet, the soul seems fundamentally different than when Gojo saw it earlier, in more ways than just ‘gained cursed energy.’ To put it simply, he would assume just from Yuji’s soul that he is older. Human souls tarnish and wear and tear as they move throughout life, and this one shouldn’t be inside of a teenager.

Another blip appears—it appears, just appears, did not come from some other place, suddenly existing close in his field of vision.

The door behind Megumi opens, and a naked toddler steps out, like he just came from the other side of the door, but Gojo knew he didn’t come from the hallway. It was like the first moment he was there was when he stepped out onto the walkway.

He’s tiny and has messy pink hair and red eyes. Short of the eye color difference, this little child that just appeared out of thin air just looks like a shrunken version of the other teenager who suddenly gained special grade cursed energy.

The toddler immediately starts crying and runs straight past Megumi and Gojo.

“Yuuuuuuuji!!!!!”

Yuji has never seen this naked baby before in his life. He doesn’t have any living family, so honestly, what the hell?

No one has any idea what’s going on, a toddler appeared from the ether, a larger version of the toddler somehow became a special grade sorcerer in the past day, and none of that is even the thing that is ultimately most mysterious.

Megumi tries as hard as he can to remember what was happening before Yuji killed the cursed spirit.

“Gojo?” he asks.

Gojo is deep in thought as he tries to put everything together.

Yuji really doesn’t know what to do, but he takes off his yellow hoodie and puts it on the crying toddler, who is holding his hands up for Yuji to pick him up, a request that is denied, because this situation is weird.

Everything is weird.

Gojo looks up when he realizes that Megumi has called his name and asks, “What is it?”

“Do you remember what the mission is?”

Satoru finds this question odd, and Megumi is bleeding from the head, so maybe that’s the most important thing?

“We came to retrieve a famous cursed object...it was…”

Blank.

Gojo is sure that he knew all about whatever it was, and that they had a good reason for coming to get it. This was an important mission, but now he can’t remember what the cursed object was in the first place, and he doesn’t sense anything nearby.

The toddler continues to scream, a distraction to the otherwise quiet confusion as Yuji, Megumi, and Satoru all try to figure out what on earth has taken place.

“Is that your little brother or something?”

Yuji answers, “Of course not!”

“YUUUUUUUUUUUJI!!!”

Gojo asks, “Let me get this straight. This kid has pink hair, something very genetically rare, maybe one in a million in Japan. He looks just like you. He appeared right here where you are at. He even has the same cursed technique. But you have no idea who he is?”

“I don’t know what a cursed whatever is, but I don’t have any living relatives.”

“YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUJI!!!!”

Gojo asks, “Is your name Yuji by any chance?”

“Okay, it is, but I swear to god I’ve never seen this thing before in my life.”

Megumi is distracted enough by the child’s yelling that he goes over to the child and kneels. “It’s okay. You don’t need to cry. Everything is okay, right?”

“Gumi…” he stretches his arms up, and Megumi, however reluctantly, picks him up.

Gojo’s hair stands on end, because no one has spoken Megumi’s name. “Megumi, have you ever met this child before?”

“No. It’s my first time seeing him.”

Gojo points to himself and asks, “Do you know my name, as well?”

The toddler, feeling a little calmer as he wipes his nose on Megumi’s jacket, says, “Goooooojoooo.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Ryo…Ryo?” he can’t remember anything else, so he decides to cry about that too.

Gojo says, “How about your family name?”

Ryo shakes his head.

“Your parents?”

Another head shake.

“Your family?”

He points to Yuji, who says, “I don’t know you!”

Ryo doesn’t really have any memories of anything, just the vaguest concepts. He has no idea why he knows their names, because first and foremost, he is a toddler and doesn’t understand much about anything. And secondly, his mind seems empty. He can’t remember what he was doing before this, only that he saw Yuji and knew his name and that he was family. That’s all the information he seems to have in the whole world.

Yuji has no memories or feelings or recollections of Ryo at all and is incredibly unnerved by the events of the evening, where he met an actual, living monster for the first time, it tried to kill his friends, he decided to fight it with this moody new kid he met, and then, something happened, and he somehow ripped it apart. Now his body feels strange and weirdly powerful, another person he feels like he knows but doesn’t has appeared, and to make the situation even stranger, a little miniature version of himself appeared naked and alone and is insisting that they are family.

Gojo feels like something incredibly significant has taken place, even though there’s not anything urgent about this situation. Perhaps it is very confusing, but usually when the gears turn in the sorcery world, there’s doom, gloom, and imminent chaos. In this case, everyone is just standing around trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, and he suspects they’re not going to find answers by staying paralyzed in this weird holding pattern.

“Let’s go back to Tokyo. All of this warrants an investigation. But we need to get the little guy some clothes. Three men getting on the train with a baby who doesn’t have his own clothes is very suspicious.”

Megumi says, “Are you worried about running into the real authorities again?”

“That was a misunderstanding! And we are real authorities. Just secret ones.”

Yuji asks, “Who are you people again?”

They talk for a while on the roof, and this does little to clear up any of the confusion.

Yuji understands that while he’s not being restrained, he and Ryo are in the custody of the Jujutsu Society, and they are required to accompany Gojo and Megumi to Tokyo.

They go to a twenty-four hour department store to find clothes for Ryo, who seems to be normal according to the understanding that all of them have about toddlers, which is limited. None of them have children or younger siblings, so they’re not totally sure what they need to be doing.

Ryo points to footed, hooded dragon pajamas as he walks, holding onto Yuji’s hand. “I wanna be a dwagon!”

“How about some normal clothes?”

His bottom lip starts trembling, and Gojo says, “Dragon it is. A fine choice, sir.”

Megumi, who has bandages wrapped around his forehead, follows along.

They dress him in a fitting room, and on the way to the front of the store to pay, Ryo stops and points. “Can I…Can I have a toy please?”

“Of course you can!” Gojo answers.

Ryo isn’t greedy, and he doesn’t ask for lots of toys, and after browsing for only one minute, chooses a big stuffed animal that’s a fluffy orange cat.

“Do you like cats?” Gojo asks.

“Mhmm.”

On the train, Ryo eats snacks, plays with his cat, and then lays down and sleeps, using it as a pillow.

Yuji says, “Someone is probably missing a kid.”

Gojo answers, “For some reason, I doubt that. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on here, but I actually do believe you when you say you don’t know who this kid even though he knew your name, because he knew our names too, and can’t tell us why. If you could look after him for now, that might be best. It doesn’t appear he has any nefarious intentions.”

Yuji finds all of this unsettling: the monster, the fact there are memories that have been wiped from his mind, the sudden appearance of this strange child, the power coursing through his body.

Megumi can tell Gojo is on his guard too because he hasn’t put his blindfold back on even though under normal circumstances, he usually won’t even remove it to fight curses. Even though he’s projecting a sense of calm, he’s very alert instead of being his rather ridiculous normal self.

Yuji’s eyes are continually drawn to the bandages around Megumi’s head, and about halfway through their trip, he reaches out and little sparks of red fly from his fingertips. He’s not entirely sure how he knows how to do it. It mostly happens out of instinct.

No one else on the train can see the sparks, but under the bandage, the deep cut on Megumi’s forehead is healed, completely, like it was never there, as Gojo watches like a hawk.

Reverse curse technique isn’t something anyone can just do. It’s not even something any sorcerer can just do. In fact, it’s so rare that there are probably only eight people living on earth who are known to do it. Of those, two are like Shoko and aren’t able to use regular cursed energy, and of the remaining six, only half can heal other people.

Yuji, who doesn’t know what a cursed technique is, is apparently part of the ‘RCT on others,’ club, which now only has four known members in the entire world.

Gojo himself is not in this club due to a binding vow he was forced to make the first time that he used RCT. Essentially, his body was in such poor condition after Toji Fushiguro left him that even though he grasped the technique, the rate he could heal himself wasn’t enough to save him from dying, so he made a binding vow that prevented him from using RCT on anyone else in exchange for accelerated healing to himself.

As a result, he could heal himself just about as fast as anyone could damage him, if they could manage to damage him. It was one of the things that made him ‘the best,’ but also limited him. He didn’t really have a choice at the time, but he always wondered if he would someday have to pay an ugly price for this.

But that was beside the point; the point was that Yuji used RCT to heal Megumi’s head, apparently without knowing what he was doing. Something in him simply told him that he could do it, and Yuji believed whatever that was even though to someone who doesn’t know about RCT, the idea that he could work a healing miracle probably seemed pretty insane.

Satoru finds the strangest thing about this is that watching him with Six Eyes, the path of cursed energy in Yuji comes entirely from his gut. Nothing from his brain. When sorcerers use their abilities, they’re always using their gut and brain together. Some people are very imbalanced, but he’s never seen someone use cursed energy without any active involvement from the brain.

This strongly suggests that Yuji isn’t lying when he says he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He really doesn’t. His brain has no idea what is going on and is not participating in his use of cursed energy, even with something that should be mentally intensive.

So if Yuji’s brain didn’t tell him that that he could heal Megumi and how to do it, how did it happen? Where did the thought come from?

When they arrive in Tokyo, they stop at a café open all night so Gojo can feed all these kids. It’s four in the morning, but as a teacher, he knows teenagers have to eat if they’re awake. Megumi no longer needs medical care, and half of their party is going to be thoroughly investigated, which is exhausting.

They all collectively, as a group, learn that when a toddler says they ‘need to go,’ they are not late for an appointment and instead need to be rushed at warp speed to the nearest bathroom.

After an argument about handwashing during which Ryo disputes the belief that he needs to wash his hands after he goes to the bathroom with all three of them at one time, they manage to address his hygiene by force and then sit down to order their food.

When their food is served, Ryo looks down at a smiley-face pancake, with its bacon grin, and turns it into a frown.

Yuji asks, “Why’d you make him sad?”

“He should be sad,” Ryo answers.

“Why should he be sad?”

“Cause I’m about to eat him.”

Gojo nearly chokes on his overly sweetened coffee as he laughs.

He seems normal to Gojo, but also kind of bad. He steals food from Yuji’s plate out of curiosity, but without asking. When Yuji freely offers him a bite of fruit, he snaps at it like a dog so hard he bites Yuji’s fingers.

Yuji is not amused, as he tiredly asks, “And I am supposed to look after this thing?”

“It’ll be fine. He obviously has something to do with you. He’s like a little baby you. Is it possible he’s your son? I saw a special on tv about twelve-year-old parents,” Gojo casually asks.

Yuji says, “He’s definitely not my son. I am an only child. My parents died not long after I was born. No siblings, no parents, no cousins, just my mean old grandpa who also just died.”

“Mean old grandpas get it on sometimes. He could be your baby uncle. I’ve got an uncle who is the same age as me,” Gojo answers.

“No way. My grandpa was poor. You don’t have a baby at age seventy unless you’re rich enough for young women to like.”

After their meal, they finally reach the Jujutsu High campus, and after more brief explanations, the investigation begins in earnest, with Shoko examining both teenagers and the toddler for injuries or external signs of oddities.

Satoru definitely saw something come from somewhere and plunge to the earth right where the four of them met. Someone had been affected by something unnatural, and it seemed obvious that it probably wasn’t Megumi.

At the same time, Gojo can tell no one in the party is possessed or corrupted by any sort of foreign curse.

Gojo makes a report at ten in the morning to the Jujutsu Society’s elders, the old men in the room, where he explains everything that he knows so far, although this just spreads confusion about the matter.

The most concerning aspect of this situation is the unknown cursed energy anomaly that Gojo witnessed, as he was unable to confirm what it was or what caused it. He tells them he believes it would not be possible for a single sorcerer to ‘tear’ reality like that, and even if they could, why would someone want to do that? And what was on the other side of that breach?

What came to them from somewhere else? What was the thing, where did it come from, what purpose did it serve?

Yuji being able to use cursed energy without any active knowledge of it whatsoever is one of the most nonsensical things, but if that wouldn’t be enough, they also had the Yuji-like baby that appeared literally the instant he opened that door, and no matter how they try to ask the question, he can’t remember anything that happened in his life before then.

Gojo says, “This business is all very suspicious, but despite the questions, Ryo appears to be an ordinary toddler, and Yuji seems as in the dark about all of this as we are. I won’t deny that something is going on here, but I believe that they are likely unwilling and unwitting characters in a larger narrative controlled created by someone else.

“They both have the same technique, and it appears to be quite powerful. They might be part of a new hereditary line, and as such, the Jujutsu Society has a responsibility to make sure they’re not alienated from the sorcery community. In addition, Yuji appears to have incredible abilities, and it would be foolish not to try and recruit him to work as a sorcerer.”

The Elders aren’t sure what’s going on, but they are sure that if there’s a neutral special grade sorcerer in play that they don’t want him anywhere near Satoru Gojo due to the fact that Gojo is purposefully causing internal factionalization within the Jujutsu Society.

They were surprised when he signed up to become an instructor, but after only three years, they regret letting him do it because while he is surprisingly talented at raising students, the monsters he raises have unshakable loyalty to him.

Unbeatable in its power, the Gojo clan is a perennial pain in the ass to literally everyone, everywhere. In most eras, they’re on par with the other two big clans, but once in a blue moon, they churn out some absolute freak of nature like Satoru Gojo and gain the right to do whatever the hell they want until that person finally kicks the bucket.

Since the clan has been living in the Kyoto area for over fifteen hundred years, before there was even a Kyoto, their influence on the Jujutsu Society has been very pronounced.

One of the benefits of opening the Tokyo campus and moving HQ there, in addition to meeting the needs of the changing population, was to establish a hub free of Gojo influence, and for many years, it served that purpose well. That is, until Satoru’s grandfather, a source of mischief and an expert political player, sent his grandson to Tokyo.

Now the Tokyo campus is Satoru Gojo’s personal stomping ground, and Kyoto is largely under the influence of his uncle, Kenji Gojo, who is Satoru’s closest political ally and his accomplice in all the Gojo bullshittery that happens on a daily basis in Japan.

Normally when two powerful and influential sorcerers get into a competition for clan leadership, one of them dies or is forced out, but according to inside reports they were always on the same team.

If they move this potential new sorcerer to the Kyoto campus, he’ll be within spitting distance of the Gojo clan estate, and the entire clan will embrace him. If they leave him in Tokyo, he’ll be carefully cultivated directly by Gojo.

The clans more closely aligned with the Elders are, unfortunately, not gifted at the kind of games that the Gojos like to play. Naobito Zenin hasn’t ever charmed anyone into anything in his life, so his allies are basically just the people in his territory and his clan that he can kill. He’s a problem, and the only thing worse than him is the heir apparent.

Somehow even less skilled at playing politics is the Kamo clan. To the older generations, politics is a matter of wielding power and forcing people into submission.

Satoru Gojo’s politics is deeply passionate, charismatic, and driven by his vision for the future. He doesn’t have to force anyone into submission, although he could, at any moment, force everyone to submit to him about any matter at any time.

After the meeting, he takes a little nap and checks in on everyone.

Megumi’s head has been perfectly healed, so he’s fine outside of having no idea what the hell is going on, although he has thoroughly reviewed his memories and is certain that the cursed object none of them can remember disappeared right before Yuji killed the cursed spirit.

“Do you think the object possessed him?” Megumi asks as they walk down the hallway in the dorm together.

“I’d be able to see something like that very clearly. There’s nothing in Yuji’s body but Yuji. The weird thing is that I saw him before when I was checking up on you. He didn’t have cursed energy or a technique. There are people whose techniques don’t physically manifest until very late in very rare circumstances, but it’s not like they just appear out of nowhere. An inactive technique is still present in the body.”

Megumi asks, “Is it possible you just couldn’t see it?”

“I can read the cursed technique of a baby before the mother figures out that she’s pregnant. I didn’t miss it. Itadori did not have a cursed technique two days ago, and today he’s got a killer technique and can use reverse curse technique. Something stinks here, but I don’t believe that either of those two are bad actors.”

The teenager isn’t sure what to think, but he knows that Yuji, unlike most people, jumped right into danger to save his school friends. Even if it meant facing an actual monster, he hadn’t been afraid, only brave, willing to do anything to help those friends.

In a world that sucked, having a friend like that wouldn’t be bad.

Megumi asks, “Will you do what you can to help?”

“Is this a personal favor from a precious student?”

“Yes, please do something.”

“On it.”

Satoru ruffles his hair and teases, “You really are just a big softie after all, aren’t you? I just had the best idea. You’re going to be so surprised!”

“I don’t like surprises,” Megumi huffs.

“Don’t be like that! You’re far too young to be so cranky all the time. You need to lighten up, go outside, think about how blue the sky is and what a nice day it is.”

Megumi opens the door and reveals it’s gray and has started raining.

“You know what I mean,” Gojo says, offering him an umbrella, even though Megumi won’t need one as long as he is walking beside his teacher.

It was an odd metaphor for what it was like being Satoru Gojo’s student; there were things he never had to worry about because he was under the protection of the strongest sorcerer on earth. If Gojo wasn’t there, his family probably would have made his life absolute hell already.

During their meal together, Gojo complains about how dreary the campus is, that the atmosphere is perpetually gloomy for some reason and Megumi points out that while rain makes most people wet, it makes Gojo whiny and momentarily depressed. The instant the sun comes out, he’ll be happy again.

Was this doofus really the strongest?

The décor was a little miserable, a little too traditional. Too cold indoors in the winter, and not enough natural light, and a lot of places that felt bare.

The cafeteria had standard-height tables that were dotted with condiment stations and uncomfortable wooden chairs that made Megumi wish he had more of a butt to cushion himself, although that was a private desire and not a public one. He would never speak out loud with his own mouth that his ass was so small that some chairs hurt him.

“Is something on your mind? I can tell you’re thinking really hard about something,” Gojo says, pointing at him with a fork smeared in icing from the second slice of cake that he’s working on.

Certainly, Megumi is not going to tell his teacher he’s thinking about his own posterior. “Just thinking about Itadori’s situation, that’s all.”

The mystery of what happened in Sendai grows even thicker when the staff discovers that Yuji, Megumi, and Satoru are not the only ones who forgot what the cursed artifact was.

No one can remember what it was, all files about it on the computer system have been deleted, and copies of files on hard media that weren’t even in a machine at the time are also missing any information about it.

In fact, a massive amount of data disappeared from Jujutsu servers, some files totally deleted, some altered so they became smaller.

No one remembers anything about it, but what they do know is that information about a collection of cursed objects has disappeared. The items in the Jujutsu Society’s possession have in many cases been there for a very long time, and some of the ‘mystery’ artifacts are numbered very low, suggesting they were some of the earliest objects they catalogued.

On the old ledgers they used before computers, the ink has literally disappeared off the page.

There are history books with strange blank spaces in the middle of a sentence, or even paragraphs missing…

“During this period, (blank space).”

But at the end of the blank space, there was a lot of writing about mayhem and violence and a list of major sorcerers who were killed by whatever was described in the blank space, including his most famous ancestor, Michizane Sugawara.

Satoru is sure he knows how Sugawara died, but as soon as he tries to recall the thought, he can’t. He knows Sugawara died in a battle but can no longer remember the name of the one who killed him.

He isn’t surprised when he goes to check on the other items that are part of this mysterious collection of cursed items and finds every single one of them is missing.

The only clue he has is that strange phenomenon that he witnessed. It involved an amount of cursed energy that even he finds incomprehensible, and multiple types used simultaneously. There was some sort of massive ‘cut’ involved, which seems to tie directly to Yuji and Ryo, whose he can tell also have techniques that cut.

There was also some aftertaste the same as or perhaps similar to Limitless, but no one in his clan who has Limitless is capable of that sort of thing.

A third type of was present, something he didn’t know how to read—something unfamiliar to his senses.

The ability of Six Eyes to read cursed techniques was relational and took many years to train. He built this ability by observing techniques and learning the information and then remembering that information when he saw elements of it in other techniques. Over time, he basically just had a library of this information.

Within that event was a piece of information that he has never seen before, a type of technique that he’s never encountered in his life.

All of this in mind, he walks around in the rain for a bit, and then ventures to a place that carries perennial dread for Gojo: the Tombs of the Star.

Gojo isn’t sure that Master Tengen will speak to him, but he believes she might have some insight into what happened. After all, nothing only happens one time. She is very old, and therefore, she might have some idea. Besides, she was a contemporary and close friend of Michizane Sugawara, and according to records from the Gojo clan, was present when he died. Therefore, she has eyewitness memories of his killer.

Despite the potential for progress, he still dreads the place. Too many bad memories, too much strife, too many reminders that sometimes relationships were incredibly complicated. There are parts of him that respect Tengen and parts of him that find her disgusting.

In the years since Riko Amanai died in this place, he’s visited it three times.

The bloodstain on the floor is deeply insulting to him, as it’s not like someone couldn’t pull up the floor planks and put new ones down. It just doesn’t bother anyone enough, since this place is out of the way, and even Tengen really spends most of her time zoned out doing what she does.

When he is permitted to step across the barrier, he knows that Tengen will see him.

He wanders to the huge tree spire at the heart of her peculiar domain, and finds her stretching as she awakens from her resting place among the roots.

The Tombs are unpleasant; they smell mossy and feel haunted. Tengen herself is rather odd, having progressed from being a person he and Geto jokingly called the hottest old lady ever to a golem-like creature with four eyes and a grossly-shaped head.

It’s his fault that she evolved into this, but he’s not sorry; it’s Tengen’s fault Geto isn’t around to laugh with him anymore.

Tengen says, “Welcome. I know this is not a place you visit unless you feel like you do not have a choice.”

“Did you see that…whatever that was?”

“I sensed it; obviously, my senses and yours are different, so we may have perceived different aspects of the phenomena.”

Sitting on one of the big, sprawling roots, Gojo explains in detail what he witnessed with Six Eyes, and Tengen listens intently.

Then, she says, “At the time that the anomaly was taking place, the flow of cursed energy in a massive area around it began to move oddly. It slowed over the course of a few seconds, stopped, and then sped up again.”

“Slowed? I didn’t detect any change in my own cursed energy.”

Tengen answers, “There is an extremely rare technique type that allows a person to bend or distort time. Only two sorcerers in Japan have ever been born with the ability. Since you have an ability that allows you to manipulate the laws of reality, it may make more sense for you when I say you would not have perceived your own time being distorted in that manner because you yourself experience reality incrementally. The human mind is not capable of perceiving if those increments change size or shape.”

Possessing Limitless required an amount of academic rigor that Gojo often did not want to invest, but he did understand what Tengen was trying to explain. Essentially, she was saying that he was likely under the pull of some technique and simply didn’t know it because human brains didn’t evolve to understand those differences due to the fact that time was basically the same for all humans with variances that were not discernable or relevant under normal conditions.

While she isn’t outright saying for sure this happened, she is suggesting that the strange technique he can’t read might be a time distortion ability of some kind.

Tengen adds, “There is a person in Japan who used an ability of this nature earlier today. A fight between sorcerers. I was not familiar with their power. Foreigners, perhaps.”

As a general rule, Tengen doesn’t meddle when sorcerers fight, and she doesn’t disclose information about sorcerers that could become dangerous to them. This neutrality, while often inconvenient, is incredibly important. In this case, she seems willing to make an exception due to the epic-level peculiarity of the situation they were investigating.

Also, Tengen is old, and in Japan, the general rule is that the older a person is, the less they appreciate the presence of outsiders. Since Tengen is one thousand years old and a hermit, he feels like she might have this specific bias as well.

She doesn’t tell Gojo where this user is and says she couldn’t even if she wanted to because she can only see the technique when it’s used.

Tengen also confirms that what entered through the tear was a single human soul. It fell so fast she couldn’t perceive information about it beyond that.

He wonders if the baby appeared because he fell through the tear? Maybe it took him a few minutes to reconstitute himself before he walked through that door?

Then again, he’s a toddler and needed help unzipping himself to pee.

That doesn’t answer how a naked soul would grow a body, since a disembodied soul should perish very quickly.

Tengen doesn’t have any other information about the event, so Gojo goes on to his next question.

“Do you remember who killed Michizane Sugawara?”

“No, like everyone and everything else, certain pieces of information have been eliminated from my memories.”

Gojo asks, “What kind of cursed technique could do that?”

Tengen shrugs. “No cursed technique. Those responsible are probably the Ones who imbue us with Heavenly Restrictions and Cursed Techniques before we are even conceived. There are powers beyond sorcery that we will never know or understand. If you encounter evidence of their work, it is best to accept it and not ask questions.

“If the gods want to erase information from our collective existence as humans, we must ask what happened in this world to prompt the very gods to take our knowledge from us? Perhaps someone did something so forbidden that all knowledge leading to that event has been removed from us so that we will not do it again.”

After considering this, Gojo says, “That just makes me more curious!”

“…And that is why we probably cannot remember anything. If told ‘don’t ever do this act again,’ humans will only be powerfully motivated to do it.”

They talk for quite some time; it’s been a while since Gojo met with Tengen, and he finds she’s quite engaged. The other times they have spoken, she seemed incredibly distracted and conversing with her was like trying to talk with someone who was watching television.

Tengen asks him about the political situation, which is odd because she doesn’t participate in the politics of the Jujutsu Society.

Yuji is meanwhile being subjected to an extensive battery of assessments ranging from a health exam and blood test, followed by a lie detector test to see if he was lying about not knowing about his cursed energy, and then from there they put him in a room with some tiny curses and he killed them by swiping at them with raw cursed energy.

They cut his arm to see him RCT.

He is forced to sit in an interrogation for two hours where they ask him questions about his family, about his body, about his experiences, about his knowledge of curses and the world of sorcery.

Yuji thinks it’s kind of cool to be in a dark room with a bright light that blinks a little now and then, like on a true crime show. It seems like they’re really pulling all the stops to get information out of him.

Since Yuji doesn’t know anything about sorcery, he feels like two hours is about two hours longer than needed.

The door squeaks open when Yuji thinks he can’t take it anymore, and Gojo pokes his head in.

“Oh, they put you in the room where we talk to criminals who we think are actually very stupid.”

“…that’s rude. Where do you put smart criminals?”

“In the pit. It’s basically a giant hole filled with sealing papers and chains and stuff. Being put in the pit is a sign you’re probably going to be executed, so this is actually a good sign,” he answers, untying him, “But enough of that, let’s talk about more important matters.”

He gives Yuji the speech, about how extraordinary his power is and how he should use it to help others. That sounds like what his grandpa said, didn’t it?

Yuji isn’t entirely sure what it is about Gojo, but deep in his belly, he feels a deep sense of trust, like the best decision he can make is to trust this man that he has only known for one day.

“So is being a sorcerer like being a superhero?”

Gojo laughs. “Not at all. It’s a lot darker. You’ll see some messed up stuff. Probably do some messed up stuff. In the end, most of us find a dark end of some kind. Yet the work we do is critically important to the world. However you came upon your power, the fact is, fate has called you to join our world.”

“I guess I can give it a try.”

“Good. I knew you’d say yes. Anyway, if you said no, you’d still be able to see curses, and curse users—basically, evil sorcerers—would start harassing you will all kinds of silly shit.”

Gojo gives him a tour, of the various buildings, walking around under an invisible bubble where no rain falls. This is not explained to Yuji, who assumes that Gojo’s secret sorcery technique is ‘can’t be rained on.’

In the room that Yuji has been assigned, there’s a futon made neatly on the floor by the bed.

Yuji enters and exclaims, “Neat, what a sweet room! Am I going to have a roommate?”

“Yeah, but it’s fine. He doesn’t take up much space.”

Yuji is looking around at the desk and the bed, checking the view from the window, and even the little hot plate and minifridge. Truly, it is a wonderland for a fifteen-year-old boy. Excitement over his new room and his new life as a monster slayer almost distract him so much that he doesn’t really pay Gojo’s comment much attention.

A roommate? Totally fine! Yuji gets along with people. People are fun, and having a little noise at home is always nice.

…doesn’t take up much space?

“Wait a minute! You’re not talking about that brat, are you? I swear I don’t know that kid.”

Gojo says, “Well, I have a hunch that you and him are really important to each other somehow.”

Yuji is not amused as he argues, “Your hunch is just based on the fact we look alike and he came through that door screaming my name.”

“Trust me, at least for now. I’m sure we’ll figure something else out at some point.”

“What am I supposed to do with a kid?”

Satoru answers, “You’re like a single teenage parent now. Except you didn’t make that thing—at least, that’s the working theory. We’ll send him to daycare when you’re in class. That’s what other teenage parents do.”

“I’m not a teenage parent. Where is the little guy right now anyway?”

“Shoko had to do an exam on him, so I left him there.”

“How long ago?”

“Five hours ago?” Gojo says, checking his watch, “She has been sending me texts all day, but I haven’t checked them. No idea what she wants. We should probably go see what Ryokun has been doing all day.”

“He’s Ryokun now?”

“He’s too cute to just be Ryo.”

“Then why don’t you take him?”

Gojo says, “Because he’s not my learning experience. I sent my personal shopper off to get whatever he needs. He’ll be here soon. We also sent someone to your old place in Sendai to pack you up and move you. That stuff should also be here this evening.”

“At least you’re efficient?”

“We really just have that one thing going for us.”

While they’re walking to the infirmary together, again, out into the pouring rain that never hits them, Gojo checks his texts from Shoko finally.

I’m done with Ryo’s exam.

Hey, I finished up with the kid.

Is someone supposed to come get him?

Should I take him to someone to be watched?

SATORU GOJO COME GET THIS CHILD!!!

If you don’t come get him, I’m going to let him smoke.

I’m serious!

Next is a picture of Ryokun sitting on an examination table with a lit cigarette in his mouth and a very confused look on his face.

Gojo knows she didn’t actually let him puff it, but it was still funny, and he laughs about it as he shows Yuji, who says, “You know what? Maybe he is better off with me than with you and your people.”

When they arrive at the infirmary, Ryokun is sleeping on an exam table under a blanket, and Shoko glares at Gojo like her secret power is laser vision and she’s going to stare a hole clean through his face.

She exclaims, “Satoru Gojo, this an Infirmary-Slash-Morgue. It’s full of needles, things that are sharp, dangerous chemicals and drugs, injured people, and corpses. I don’t have toys here. I don’t have a playroom. I don’t have anything that a toddler should touch, or anything I want a toddler to touch. Do you know what a bored toddler is like? And that one bites!”

Gojo says, “Of course he bites. You can tell just from looking into his eyes. Look how peacefully he’s sleeping now though.”

“I got tired of that little gremlin and gave him enough ketamine to put both of us in a good mood again.”

Gojo gasps. “You gave the baby horse tranquilizer? I’m appalled by your mothering skills.”

“Grow up. It was just a little bit. Besides, he hid in the freezer and jumped out to scare me.”

“…which freezer? Like, the one where you keep your ice cream stash or…” Gojo asks.

Shoko answers, “If I heard something moving around in my ice cream freezer, that wouldn’t really be scary, would it? If there is one place that a person should never jump out of and say ‘boo…’”

Hearing Ryokun bit Shoko and got so bored he unknowingly hid in the corpse freezer and creeped her out is amusing for Gojo and not anyone else.

Yuji decides that definitely, Ryokun probably needs someone more mature than these people in their late twenties who definitely shouldn’t ever be trusted with a small child.

As he picks Ryokun up from the table, the toddler wraps himself around Yuji, mumbling a happy, “Yuuuuuuuji,” as he rested his head on the teenager’s shoulder.

His gut tells him to trust these people, but they seem kind of insane.

Yuji carries Ryokun to the cafeteria after they discuss Shoko’s findings, but there are no booster seats, so a somewhat drowsy Ryokun sits on his lap and they eat together.

He seems surprised that he’s getting to eat again.

Souls don’t hold memories like the mind, so most of the information is gone. Yuji did not bring a cache of forbidden data with dates and technical information back with him, and when Sukuna reincarnated into this form, he forgot the facts.

What souls do hold are deep connections to other souls, and imprints from the events that really left their mark: the worst moments, the best moments, the things that were scariest. It is different for the two of them, because Yuji feels the familiarity, but Ryokun can sometimes go as far as to recall names as his soul begins bouncing around with other souls that he knew.

Ryokun is very young, and there are feelings inside of him that he doesn’t know how to express. He doesn’t have memories of being hungry, but his soul remembers a kind of hunger that so deeply cut into his soul that no matter how much he ate, it would never be satisfied. He doesn’t remember that the last time he was this young, he once got so hungry that he ate a nest of baby birds that fell out of a tree during a storm.

He just knows that Yuji is feeding him multiple times in the same day, and not making him beg or cry, and its good food, even meat.

The kid is careful and holds onto his toy like it’s the most precious thing he has ever owned, and when they get back to the room, there are boxes from Yuji’s old place and bags of new stuff for Ryokun.

Judging from the price tags Yuji cuts off the stuff, he decides Gojo might be one of those people who is so rich that he doesn’t know how much anything costs, but Yuji grew up kind of poor. Even though there’s not really enough space in the room for his stuff and Ryokun’s assorted costume pajamas and clothes and toys, they do their best to unpack.

Since Yuji came from near poverty, he doesn’t have a lot of stuff either, but when he puts out some more stuffed toys on the floor, Ryokun seems confused.

“For me?”

“That’s right. All this stuff is from Gojo. You should tell him thank you when you see him.”

“But I didn’t earn it. And I got to eat lots today.”

Yuji has no idea why this child even has a concept of ‘earning’ anything. According to Shoko’s report, he is probably three years old, and he seems surprised that he gets to continually eat and he doesn’t understand why he’s being given a menial number of toys to play with.

Yuji bends down. “You don’t have to earn food or toys. We’re going to take good care of you, okay? We’ll make sure you get lots and lots of food and that you have lots of fun, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because you deserve it.”

Everything about what’s going on is peculiar, but Yuji feels bad for this poor kid, whoever he is. It seems like some sad stuff probably already happened to him in his life, and he doesn’t want to add to that.

They go down to the big bath together, and Yuji helps him clean up, get his teeth brushed, and puts him in dinosaur pajamas.

While Yuji is getting ready for bed, Ryokun holds up a picture book with animals from his treasure trove of new stuff, and Yuji very patiently sits with him on the bed, and they look at it together.

Yuji doesn’t even know who he is or where he came from, but his grandpa told him to help as many people as he could, and this sad but also weirdly aggressive little kid is a person, right?

Ryokun goes right to sleep on the futon, and once the lights are out, Yuji feels the bed shifting around as Ryokun has awoken and climbs up, glow-in-the-dark red eyes alit as he gets under the covers with the teenager, who is half asleep.

Yuji decides to just roll with it if the kid will go to sleep.

Instead, Ryokun tosses, he turns, he mumbles inaudibly in his sleep, he steals the covers, then throws them to the floor, then wakes up Yuji to tell him he’s cold, and when Yuji tells him he’s cold because he threw the blankets on the floor, he lies and blames Yuji.

Sharing a bed with a toddler is just a whole experience, and Yuji is tired, so he puts the blanket on Ryokun and decides to sleep on the futon, having been run out of the bed by a big baby.

When he awakens the next morning, the blankets are on the floor again, and while he fell asleep on his belly, Ryokun is sleeping sprawled out across Yuji’s back in his underwear, having taken off his dinosaur pajamas at some point in the night. The dinosaur pajamas are under the bed, indicating that the toddler was also under the bed at some point during the night, and the bed itself is empty, bereft of sleepers and blankets.

His eyes fly open when he hears the door creak open.

“Where are you going?”

“Potty.”

“Do you need help?”

“No.”

The bathroom is two doors over and has a different-colored door, so he wonders if it’s okay to let him go.

Yuji decides to see what happens, and exactly four minutes later, the boy returns, still in his underwear, shaking his wet hands.

“Are your hands wet because you washed them or because you didn’t wash them?”

“I washed!”

“Come here.”

Yuji does something his grandpa used to do and smells the boy’s hands to see if they smell like fresh soap. Either Ryokun was lying, or they had switched to pee-scented soap overnight.

“I saw a panda.”

“Sure you did,” he tiredly mumbles as he takes Ryokun back to the bathroom and tries to map out everything he might have touched in between. “Let’s go wash our hands.”

And so, Yuji simply resumes the tireless and endless task of shepherding the most lost soul of Ryomen Sukuna all over again, this time from scratch, with the barest, basest scars exposed.

XXX

Elsewhere, Kenjaku flips through notebooks, opens scrolls, and practically tears open the door to a safe. Something has happened; he thinks at first that his mind might be playing tricks on him, but it’s definitely not. There is some massive element in his plan that has, in every sense, vanished.

His current hideout is a country cottage that was owned by a ‘missing’ member of Suguru Geto’s old cult. It’s quite relaxing and has nice views of rolling green hills the local ranchers used to raise cows.

Uraume has been staying here with him for some time.

This cottage has been his true base for quite some time, a calm and perfect place to carefully plan the greatest event in human history.

They don’t bring the curses to this location because…well, they’re curses. They’ll only ally with Kenjaku as long as they think that he’ll help them achieve their goals, but the only goal they’re going to achieve is going to be helping Kenjaku control a certain difficult sorcerer.

The problem? His plan is inexplicably ruined, and he can’t remember why.

In a sequential plan that would allow him to achieve his goals, many of the numbered items in that sequence simply no longer existed. Even the lines they were drawn on have been gone, like the ink was lifted from the page by some unknown force.

Kenjaku wonders if one of his subjects has managed to escape so fully from his grasp that even every trace of them has been erased? How would he find out who that subject was or the means by which they accomplished this feat? Perhaps it was several people or a group or an object?

It seemed like something incredibly significant had been taken away from him, because ignoring the question about how his own memory had been altered, his plan doesn’t seem like anything that makes sense without the steps that have been removed.

And it’s not just Kenjaku having an issue; Uraume can’t remember why she decided to come to the modern era via incarnation. Kenjaku can’t remember why he even offered in the first place?

What had happened?

By what means did it happen?

Kenjaku had no way of knowing that the sharpest weapon he had, Ryomen Sukuna, had been delivered from his grasp. He couldn’t even remember what the weapon was, what it was called, how he obtained it…he only knew that it was critical to his plan and now it was not only gone, but even his memories about it were missing.

How could he undo it? Could he undo it?

Was there really someone who had a cursed technique that could erase memories?

Uraume is left with an existential crisis, because her motivation for existing has been taken from her for unknown reasons by an unknown party.

Kenjaku is left with a broken plan.

He wants to consult Tengen about this, but he can’t get close to Tengen in his current body and leaving it behind isn’t acceptable. It’s also possible that Tengen won’t give him the privilege of her neutrality if she sees whose skin he’s wearing now.

If she told a certain someone, Kenjaku is certain Satoru Gojo would hunt him, and he doesn’t want that. Having to abandon Suguru Geto’s body would really ruin everything, but he can’t get caught by Gojo under the wrong circumstances.

What will he do now?

Chapter Text

According to a DNA test, Ryokun is Yuji’s dad. Obviously, that’s not possible.

This doesn’t clear anything up, and it’s not the only thing that’s odd about Yuji’s family. There aren’t any living family members who might be able to answer questions, because Yuji really doesn’t even remember his parents and he doesn’t know much about the strange circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Gojo is sure that Yuji and Ryokun are somehow critically important to something that’s going on, but none of them know how these two boys fit into the story or what the story even is.

The only active lead Gojo has is that Tengen clocked a sorcerer using a time distortion technique the day after the anomaly.

As he sits at a desk in his rarely used office and types away at the computer, he feels like he’s grasping at straws.

The Jujutsu Society doesn’t have any records of anyone having a technique like that, so when he posts an email to various regional sorcery organizations, he doesn’t have much hope that he’s going to get an answer.

First of all, he’s searching for a technique so rare that he’s never even heard about it before and Tengen has only known two people in her very long life that had similar abilities.

And secondly, if there is a time distortion or manipulation technique that no one knows about, whoever does know about it probably isn’t going to want anyone else to know. It’s the kind of technique that’s most powerful if no one knows what it is.

He spends most of the next hour or two leaning back in his chair, eating an entire box of doughnuts while he watches the birds gathered around the feeder he hung outside the window. There are some rambunctious squirrels that swing wildly from the feeder in their greed for the seed, but also some rather aggressive sparrows who don’t accept having filthy mammals in their space.

For a moment, he ponders if the birds think less of squirrels, because they are heavy, and even though they can jump and they can reach high places, they can never fly.

Then he gets a phone call, from a man he’s met before, at some sorcery something-or-another. Sometimes, people get the bright idea for sorcerers to mingle, although it usually doesn’t go well, because sorcerers are violent and egotistical. Normal people with a common interest are like dogs visiting a dog park, it’s fun for them to meet the other dogs.

Sorcerers are like cats being taken to a park and turned loose with a bunch of other cats. It’s just not a great situation for the cats who don’t want to get to know other cats or the ones who thought it was a good idea for them to mingle.

His caller is the head of a French sorcery house, something very rare. Almost all sorcerers were Japanese, although there were some exceptions out in the world.

Renee Ducreaux was the head of an ancient clan primarily known for a fire technique, but he willingly told Gojo that they had a time manipulation technique that ran in their family that was extremely rare. Only a few individuals had ever been born with it, and this technique seemed to appear on a schedule of sorts, appearing in the next person born into the clan’s main line one hundred and thirty years after the last person was born with it.

A year ago, the timer on that clock ran out, and they expected his grandson to be born with the technique.

 He wasn’t.

Ducreaux knew this meant that an unknown child had been born to the clan, and since it was much harder for a woman to have an unknown baby than a man, he questioned his sons and grandsons and nephews and investigated all the women they had been with.

One of them had slept with a woman who had no cursed energy or cursed technique, but during their investigation, discovered she belonged to Reksten House, one of the other European sorcery families.

They found the woman, but there was no baby.

Her brother, Tore Reksten, had a technique-stealing technique, one that was fatal to the target, and she had essentially stolen this technique from the Ducreaux house. As soon as the baby was born, she gave it to her brother and he took Temporal Distortion from the child, killing him.

Having a child just to kill it is an incredibly brutal reality, but in the sorcery world, people often did unspeakable things in their lust for power.

Just considering the fact that this type of technique was so rare, if someone was using a time manipulation technique in Japan, it almost had to be Reksten.

Ducreaux said this was probably a very simple way to steal techniques from clans without needing to defeat sorcerers. The only reason Ducreaux even found out this had taken place was because this particular technique appeared on a schedule, something specific to Temporal Distortion. Most techniques didn’t, so if it had been one of the Ducreaux family’s other techniques, they would likely have never found out that they made and then killed a member of his family.

This act was cruel and violent, and Ducreaux mentioned that it made sense that Japan might be the next stop. If they wanted to take really powerful techniques from sorcery houses where they didn’t have to worry about overpowering the user or facing retribution from the family, Japan was obviously the place to go.

Ducreaux tells Gojo about Temporal Distortion, because Gojo, despite being obnoxious, is the most powerful sorcerer on earth, and it is certainly within his ability to catch and punish Tore Reksten. If he and his sister were devoured by Japan’s white dragon, good.

The European sorcery houses are enraged and are at war with the Reksten clan, because Tore violated the unspoken rule that the sorcery houses look out for each other’s children and never attack them over conflicts. This is a rule that all clans know is best for everyone, and even good-for-nothings like the Zenins follow it.

In the Everything-Goes-To-Shit timeline that Yuji’s soul came from, Gojo does not observe the anomaly, and therefore never speaks to Tengen about it, and finally never sends out an email asking questions.

So, this information remains hidden to him, to the day of his fatal battle with Ryomen Sukuna.

When Ducreaux’s file about the incident arrives in his mailbox, he wonders if there’s some stupid Japanese sorcerer who was lured into participating in this disgusting scam.

Then he sees the picture of the woman who had a baby so her brother could kill it and realizes that the idiot is him. It is him. He slept with this woman.

His stomach turns violently at the idea that he’s probably been caught up in this bloody business.

Despite being a dedicated teacher and a pillar of the sorcery community, it’s not really a secret in the sorcery community at large that he really doesn’t conduct himself well in his personal life.

Starting in high school when the elders tried to get Gojo removed from heirship by telling his grandfather that he was sleeping with his male classmate, there were just facets of him that didn’t align with what everyone wanted. Before his grandfather died, he’d pled with Gojo to settle down in an arranged marriage and behave himself, or if he couldn’t do that, to pick a woman, literally any woman at all, and marry her, make some more sorcerers.

The years that have followed have been a constant stream of mostly men and few women, party drugs, nights of laughter and overconsumption.

Was the knowledge that he was wild and liked to party the reason he became a target?

Ingrid Reksten used a different name, had a different backstory, and since she lacked cursed energy, he never had any reason to not believe her when he met her at the bakery closest to the campus, a place anyone would know he frequents.

If someone wrote down, ‘Satoru Gojo is a whore who likes to party and eats cake every day,’ obviously posting up at the bakery he visits most would make sense.

There was flirtation, as he came and went, day in and out. She teased him, but she made him work for it, so he felt like he was the one who won when she finally gave it to him.

They partied every time he had a day off for a couple of months, and then she ghosted him and moved on.

He was a little bummed out, but most people that fall into a phase like that come to their senses and stop. It wasn’t really irregular that it ended like this. Expected, even. Most people were limited in their personal lives by this kind of behavior, but it hadn’t stopped Satoru from doing anything he wanted to do.

Gojo decides not to tell anyone about his potentially massive fuck-up, both because it’s a very delicate situation and also because he doesn’t want to hear any ‘I told you so’s’ about the way he’s been behaving for almost an entire decade despite everyone telling him he’d regret it eventually.

That evening, while Gojo is investigating and hoping he’s wrong about what he thinks might have happened, Yuji is preparing for Ryokun’s first day of daycare.

He has been at the Jujutsu Society for a little over a week and was surprised when his paycheck hit because no one told him that his special grade sorcery license entitled him to a weekly paycheck totaling more money than he could even think about.

Yuji grew up quite poor, an orphan adopted by his grandfather who absolutely did not want to be raising another kid. He’s not even sure that he’d wanted to raise his own son, much less his grandson. It wasn’t that his grandfather didn’t love him; he just didn’t want to be on the hook for childcare, and Yuji was always acutely aware of that fact.

He took Ryokun shopping for his little supplies, making sure he had whatever the best brand was, got him expensive shoes, a nice little haircut, made sure his uniforms were exactly the right size, and now the night before, is packing a fancy character bento he ordered from a shop into a cute bento box so that the little kids think someone made it for him homemade.

Kids are mean, even really little ones. If Yuji knew anything, it was that even the tiniest kids could tell when someone was poor or if they weren’t really being loved by anybody. He didn’t want the other kids to give him a hard time, so he was doing his best.

He still had a lot of homework to do, but he wanted Ryokun to make friends and to have a fun time at daycare.

Ryokun is curious about these preparations but plays quietly with his dinosaurs.

Their space has changed a little bit; the wall between the adjoining rooms has been removed so they have a much bigger room, and they have bunk beds on the far wall. They have a little sofa and a television, and a little table where the toddler likes to sit and color.

Yuji thought sleeping on top would prevent Ryokun from invading his space, but it turns out that he is very nimble and can jump and pull himself up from the bottom bunk to the top without even using the little steps.

It was strange how much Yuji remembered about how it felt to be a child without parents, who was forced into the care of someone else who didn’t really want the task. All he knew was he didn’t want to make Ryokun feel the way he did when he was in that position.

He was absolutely an unwanted burden, but Yuji didn’t want to make him feel that way. It wasn’t like it was his fault, or that he could do anything about it.

When morning comes, they have a proper breakfast at the cafeteria, and then Yuji carries him piggyback to the daycare closest to the campus. It’s actually a very nice place because this particular part of the Tokyo outskirts is quite affluent, mainly populated by successful professional families that wanted a little more space than the more exciting parts of the city allowed.

It’s quite warm out, and the thing that Yuji fears most is that when Ryokun gets a little warm, he will straight up take all his clothes off and lay flat on the ground in his underwear like he is dying from heat stroke, when he is actually just mildly uncomfortable.

When they arrive, a staff member shows them around, and Ryokun is clearly interested in the playground and the toys and all the activities, but he looks at the other toddlers like he is personally disgusted by them for some reason.

They learn that if Ryokun is a very good boy all day long, he will get a golden apple sticker.

Before Yuji leaves, he kneels in front of him and tells him, “I want you to get a special golden apple sticker today, okay? Listen to your teachers, and do what they say. Be nice to everyone and make friends. Have lots of fun, okay?”

Ryokun has his sights set on the playground, and mumbles, “Okay bye.”

He gives him a pat on the head, saying, “Have a good day, okay, brat?”

“Okay bye.”

Sometimes, the toddler was just incredibly rude, but that almost just seemed to be his nature.

Legally, thanks to paperwork the Jujutsu Society managed to get faked, Ryo Itadori is his little brother. It’s probably the most believable story, since they’re staying together, and they look so much alike.

If none of this had happened, Yuji probably would have been forced to drop out of high school and get a job to support himself. It had been a really long time coming, and he was really just waiting for his grandpa to die because he really wanted Yuji to graduate.

Yuji had accepted that fate, that he would be left alone in the world. He’d even decided he’d get a job at the grocery store down the street from the old apartment and make his way on his own from there.

It really didn’t seem so bad to him.

A week later, he’s still in high school, has more money than he knows how to spend, and lives with a kid that the universe decided to assign to him for some reason.

In one timeline, Sukuna was a burden for him to carry.

In another, he’s just a different kind of burden to carry, although if his old and new current selves could have an honest conversation, they’d certainly agree he’s less of a pain in the ass this way.

As he’s walking back, he sees a white Ferrari screeching to a halt in the side parking adjacent to a bakery, and Gojo jumps out with dark aviators on and his usually pineapple-like hair down and casually messy.

The coolness factor of Satoru Gojo is made clear to Yuji as he sees him in the wild, not wearing his uniform, but sweatpants and a hoodie, and limited edition Nike basketball sneakers. He looks like some famous actor getting caught dressed down as he jumps out of his sports car to do some sort of normal person errand.

Gojo turns to Yuji and waves. “Hey, fancy meeting you here.”

“Dude, do you even know how cool you are?”

His teacher flashes a blinding white smile and says, “You think so? I think you’re cool too, Yuji. If we competed without our powers, you’d beat me at any athletic feat. I have to take the day off to tend to some personal business. But also, please don’t tell your substitute that you saw me at the bakery. He’ll think I called in to eat cake.”

Exactly two days before, he and Megumi were late for class with one of the other instructors because they were out with Gojo on an errand, and he declared they had a ‘cake emergency’ causing Ijichi to pull over at this very bakery.

Yuji says, “You’re not having a cake emergency again, are you?”

“Believe it or not, I am at this bakery for life or death reasons.”

“I believe it…not?”

“Also, don’t tell anyone I know how to drive. It would ruin my life.”

Considering how Gojo ran up on the bakery despite clearly knowing where it was, slammed on his brakes, slid into the parking lot, and is currently parked crooked, Yuji doesn’t even think it would be a lie to say he doesn’t, but that’s beside the point.

Yuji doubts very seriously that Gojo is having a life or death situation at the Daisy Princess Cupcake Shop and Bakery.

He assumes Gojo is just skipping work because he’s a little irresponsible and is currently just craving sugar.

In reality, Gojo is trying to find one of the bakery’s former employees who may or may not currently be carrying a baby Gojo that she intends to kill.

Yuji continues on to the school, where they have a substitute teacher for the day. Well, calling him a substitute teacher wouldn’t be accurate, because he’s not a teacher, and did not want to be given this task.

When he sees the substitute from across the main courtyard, for a moment he can’t move.

Maybe it happens because the distance between them is like that night.

But when Kento Nanami, standing a few meters ahead, turns to greet him, it’s like two different moments are playing at one time.

In this moment, he’s standing in the sun in his suit, pristine but annoyed.

In the other moment that flashes intermittently, half of his body is covered in burns so severe that his eyeball has ruptured.

It’s like frames from two different movies were shuffled together and both are playing simultaneously in his stream of consciousness.

There is someone else in the alternate frame, standing behind the man before him.

Suddenly, the man explodes from the waist up, spraying blood and gore everywhere.

The other person, a strange looking guy with stitch-like scars, turns and smiles at Yuji, and then the vision is over and everything is back to normal.

Under his breath, he whispers, “Na-Nanamin?”

Yuji has no idea what he just saw, but it horrified him, and now he’s left standing there feeling all kinds of things and he doesn’t understand any of it. He feels incredible joy to see this man’s face and feels the urge to run and squeeze him until his ribs break.

What if his name is actually Nanamin? What does that mean?

Ryokun knew the names of a few people and none of them, Ryokun included, understood why. Was this like that?

What was that vision he had?!

Kento Nanami’s first impression of Yuji Itadori is that he seems confused and frightened. When he introduces himself, Yuji seems frozen, like he’s not able to move for the better part of a minute. His eyes are filled with a kind of mortal fear that any sorcerer can recognize right away.

When Yuji moves, he throws his arms around Nanami, whose arms hang limp at his sides.

Nanami isn’t sure what is going on, but he doesn’t directly push the kid away, because he grew up in this world too, and he knows that young sorcerers just go through really hard stuff. Maybe he’s just struggling, and this is the thing that he has to do.

This particular teenager is a bit odder than most, as he’s suddenly been thrust into this world under mysterious circumstances.

When Yuji releases him, he realizes what he is doing is very weird. “Sorry. I know we don’t know each other.”

Nanami raises a hand and patiently answers, “Say no more. We all have moments where we aren’t ourselves.”

“It’s just…as I was walking up here…I saw something. I know it sounds crazy, but it was like a vision, like two things were happening at once and one of them wasn’t real.”

The sorcerer asks, “What did you see?”

“I…I don’t think I should say, if that’s okay.”

In the future, he saw Nanami die with his own eyes. He saw the blood spatter as it splashed on the ceiling and all over everything else, and during the vision, remembered the smell and the sounds and the feelings of all of it. So it all came rushing back to him, and he is left full of feelings and he is very shaken.

Nanami says, “Let’s sit down for a moment. Deep breaths. I understand that you are very new to this world. The work we do is deeply important, but it can take a mental toll.”

What was it, Yuji wonders?

Was it something crazy his mind made up? Was it a premonition? Nothing like that could really happen, right? But didn’t Gojo say sorcerers sometimes died dark, horrible deaths?

Under everything, Yuji feels like this man is someone that he loves and trusts, even though they have just met. He is a man that he has missed dearly, in all the time they did not know each other. It’s a different feeling than the one he has toward Gojo, much warmer in some ways. More personal.

Deep inside, a feeling: ‘I am so happy to see him again, after all this time.’

Nanami isn’t a teacher and is annoyed that he ended up with this duty because Gojo called in to deal with a ‘personal emergency.’ While he works on calming Yuji down, he considers the possibility that Gojo is probably having an unplanned lazy day and eating cake.

(He is at the moment, eating cupcakes from the Daisy Princess Cupcake Shop and Bakery while he drives way too fast and considers that perhaps he should have reigned in the chaos in his personal life years ago.)

When Megumi joins them, he sees Yuji sitting on a bench with Nanami, shaking with tears streaming down his bewildered face.

“What’s going on?”

Nanami says, “Just some passing anxiety. No need to worry.”

Of course there was a need to worry, because Yuji seemed very resilient to Megumi. Seeing him shaking and weeping and not being able to explain why is definitely concerning. Megumi wonders if maybe he’s been under too much pressure, learning about his new fate as a sorcerer and also being forced to look after a child because Gojo thinks that’s the right thing to do.

Nanami wonders if the kid is causing Yuji to stress out as well. Under normal circumstances, if an unattended child with a cursed technique surfaced and they didn’t know what to do with him, a sorcery clan would be assigned to foster him.

He knows why Gojo threw his weight around to keep the little one on campus, even though it remains an absolutely absurd idea: if Yuji is special grade and has the same technique as his ‘brother,’ there was a huge chance that Ryokun was also destined for the summit of sorcery.

Little ones with that kind of potential really needed to be under the protection of their families, but in this case, there’s no clan. Only one of the big three that occasionally produce a special grade sorcerer would be qualified to raise and train Ryokun, and politically, the elders already regret letting Gojo have Megumi Fushiguro, because he is on his ascent, and it seems like he’s going to be a pillar of Gojo’s faction.

Meaning that if Gojo just let the elders do what they want, they might send Ryokun to the Zenin clan to make up for the Megumi flub. Ryokun’s chances of both surviving and growing up to be a productive and positive member of the Jujutsu Society with a Zenin upbringing are slim.

Gojo essentially created a new clan out of Yuji and Ryokun just to protect the little one from the scary and oftentimes tragic fate that awaited young sorcerers who lacked the protection of a clan.

Nanami is sure Gojo hasn’t spelled it out directly for Yuji and explained to him that he wants to keep Ryokun with him so that he grows up being treated like a human being and not a potential weapon of mass destruction. Secondarily, making sure Yuji has a close human connection will protect him from the pressure of others to treat him like a weapon of mass destruction.

For an idiot, Gojo understands how to handle situations in a way that is surprisingly thoughtful, but will also ultimately serve his goals. Because every day that the Itadori brothers spend under Gojo’s umbrella is another day they will quietly accrue loyalty to him.

Nanami takes the teenagers to the staff lounge, where he gets Itadori a coffee and asks questions about how he’s liking the campus so far, just to take his mind off whatever he went through a few minutes ago.

He’s not a teacher, and he’s not good with students. He just knows how stressful it really is to start facing the difficulties of working and training as a sorcerer.

Once Yuji fully regains his composure, Kento says, “We have a light day today. We’re going to go meet the other first year at the station, take care of a minor mission, and after that, I have instructions to let you all have ‘fun.’”

Yuji tries to push it all out of his mind, and in the car, talks with Megumi about other stuff. They watch a few viral videos online, and Nanami looks in the rearview mirror at them now and then.

Little does Yuji know that his day of torment is not done, because he’s about to see Nobara Kugisaki in a train station. Not the train station, but close enough that he is triggered again.

As she approaches them, he has another strangely threaded vision where she is simultaneously staring at him like he’s a whole raw potato she’s been served for dinner. And also, a fourth of her face is exploding out of her head, her eyeball flying off to one side and chunks of her brain and blood spraying on him.

He can practically feel the droplets on his face.

That ‘other’ face is there in this vision too, pale, with silvery blue hair, stitches on his face. Smiling.

Nanami can tell that Yuji is freaking out again and puts a hand on his shoulder, whispering quietly, “Deep breaths. Everything is okay.”

Yuji recovers from this bout of anxiety a little faster, perhaps because he saw the one that happened earlier didn’t result in anything bad happening, and he finds his center again.

Nobara is quite talkative, a spunky and somewhat socially aggressive girl who controls the conversation in the car, which is a favorable situation since Megumi has negative charisma and Yuji is having some challenges.

When they get to the location of the little mission, Nanami decides to go against Gojo’s instructions and sends Megumi in with Nobara instead of Yuji.

Nanami gestures for Yuji to sit on a little bench and then sits on the ground beside him while they wait, carefully dividing his attention between the mission and the other mission. While this is a test for Nobara, Nanami knows that Megumi is very talented and that the threat level of this mission is below him, so if something goes wrong, Megumi will step in.

It’s the advantage Megumi has, having been with Gojo for years already.

Kento doesn’t want to be a teacher, but for today, he is responsible for these kids, and he’s concerned about Yuji, so he does his best. He tries to talk Yuji into telling him about what he saw while in the back of his mind, he wonders how he allowed himself to be roped into becoming a substitute for the day.

Gojo’s personal emergency is definitely something stupid, that much he knows.

Yuji looks down at him and says, “When I first saw you, I saw a hallucination or a vision or something. You died.”

“I can assure you that I do not plan on becoming deceased anytime soon.”

“You were…burned. So badly. Half of you was covered in these really awful burns. You looked back at me and said something. I don’t remember what. And then you just sort of…from the waist up, your body just exploded or something. It was very…you know, messy. Graphic. Then when I saw Kugisaki, something similar happened, except it was her face…”

Nanami talks it out with him, and Yuji discovers as they do that these two premonitions are linked; they happened in the same place, and the same ‘villain’ appears in both.

Since it was just the two people he met that day, Nanami is inclined to think Yuji’s premonition is just a symptom of anxiety. He is more concerned about Yuji’s mental state and the consequences that can have as a training sorcerer than anything.

 Once Megumi and Nobara finish the mission that had a few challenges, but ultimately went well, instead of taking the kids ‘for fun,’ he takes them to a quiet restaurant to have a meal and lets them spend a while eating and talking. While Nanami is not an expert at dealing with kids, he doesn’t think Yuji needs any additional stimulation and thinks maybe he needs to stay on the proverbial bench and not be sent on jobs until Gojo returns from his ‘personal emergency.’

Ignoring signs of mental distress in young sorcerers was how Haibara’s growing anxiety led to his death and why Suguru Geto slipped out of their grasp.

After he returns the students to the campus, he speaks to Gojo briefly on the phone, and he agrees to sitting Yuji until he returns, despite seeming distracted.

He is head of a sorcery clan, after all. Maybe something with his family?

At the dorms, Yuji takes a couple of hours to himself, but as he lays on the top bunk, feels increasingly that his ‘visions’ were not a figment of an anxious mind because he wasn’t actually that anxious. Despite all the changes, including becoming caretaker to a small child, he didn’t feel stressed out or even bad. He’d honestly had an okay morning and was feeling optimistic until he saw Nanami.

It felt real to him.

So, so real.

It’s too quiet, he decides, and it’s almost three, so he decides he’ll go pick up Ryokun from daycare.

The walk helps him clear his head a little more, and he settles even more on the idea that his brain wasn’t randomly hallucinating the deaths.

He wonders if Gojo is okay, and what he’s doing on his day off.

Nanami seemed cool though? Very calm and mature, the first adult he’s met at the campus that doesn’t seem a little bit crazy.

When he arrives at the daycare, Ryokun is sitting very neatly on the floor with the other kids, listening to a story.

The story is almost over, so he waits in the front room, and another one of the employees pulls him aside.

“How did Ryokun do?” Yuji asks.

The woman lets out a nervous laugh and says, “He has a lot of energy.”

“Uh-oh.”

“There were some behavioral issues. A little biting. Some punching. Hair pulling. Scratching. He went on the monkey bars and somehow managed to crawl to the top despite the fact it is not a three-year-old apparatus, and once he got up there, he took off his shirt and declared himself the king. Also, Ryokun doesn’t seem to understand about sharing? Like, what it is, or why he should do it? He seems very inclined to resolve his feelings by hitting, even when he is feeling happy. He was a bit of a handful, if we can be honest.”

Yuji sighs. “I am so sorry.”

“Let’s work on his behavior a little. If we can steer him away from initiating physical conflict, that would be an excellent start. If we could get him to stop taking his shirt off whenever he feels happy, that would also help.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

Yuji is given a book and some pamphlets and a strong talking-to about what a hellion Ryokun was and while she didn’t outright say it, it was clear that his presence had made everyone else’s day significantly worse.

Ryokun runs to him after the story is over once he has gathered all of his things and greets him with a big smile accentuated by a little scab on his lip from jumping off the monkey bars.

Yuji gave him the mission that day of being good and winning a golden apple sticker. That idea had clearly gone to shit, but he proudly brandishes the four golden apple stickers that he forcibly took from other kids who actually earned them.

The boy seems very happy, and Yuji asks, “Did you have a good day today?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like you’re the only one. What happened to you being good and earning a golden apple sticker?”

Ryokun answers, “One, two, three, four! Four is more!”

The employee smiles a little nervously. “He seems to know his numbers, and that some numbers are bigger than others. He’s quite bright.”

Yuji can tell she’s just trying to find something nice to say about him.

“We’ll work on his atrocious behavior. Again, very sorry.”

The two leave together, and Yuji says, “Do you think you were good today?”

“No.”

Yuji’s goal for Ryokun was to earn his golden apple sticker by being good, but instead of him learning that he would be rewarded for good behavior, he was astonishingly bad and took the stickers from other kids. In his little brain, he has observed that he can be bad and do whatever he wants and get more rewards than if he is good.

Ryokun is chatty on the way home, telling Yuji about his day in short little sentences while he holds Yuji’s hand. He is incredibly cute in this mode but spent most of his day running around without his shirt terrorizing everyone.

On the upside, he knows his numbers.

“You’re not going to make any friends if you’re mean all the time. And if you have another day like today, they might not let you come back, and then what are we going to do?”

Ryokun squeezes his fingers and says, “Then we can stay together all day.”

“I have to go to class and work. That’s how we’re able to afford to buy food and toys and stuff. You have to learn how to be good.”

“Yuji.”

“What?”

“Is being good fun?”

“Of course it is. When you’re nice and good, people will be your friend, and you’ll get to have lots of good times.”

“Is it more fun than being bad?”

Yuji looks down at him, a bit surprised by the question. “Do you think it’s fun to be bad? To hit people and bite and climb everywhere and yell?”

“Yeah. Lots of fun. Being good is dumb.”

The teenager sighs. “Sounds like we have a lot of work to do.”

He lets go of Yuji’s hand and runs forward a few steps with his arms up in the air. “I want to do what I want!”

“But if you hurt other people, that will make them sad.”

“But I will be happy!”

Yuji wonders what on earth is wrong with this kid? From his vague understanding, little kids were sort of kind and empathetic by nature. Ryokun was just wild and honestly, sort of mean and inconsiderate. Obviously, it’s probably due to something that happened to him before, but it’s a pain in the ass trying to figure out why he’s like this or how to fix him.

A plan begins to materialize in his mind, and when they arrive at home, he goes to the supply closet for some posterboard.

He works on it before and then even after dinner when they are working on winding down for bed.

After a bedtime story, Yuji hangs the poster on the wall, which has no words since Ryokun can’t read, only a crudely drawn orange cat. He did his best, but it wasn’t much, despite the effort.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Something dumb.”

Yuji lets out a breath that represents all the hopes and dreams he has that he can teach this little troll how to be good. “It’s a very special project we’re going to do together. Are you excited about doing a project?”

“No.”

“I don’t even think you know what a project is and you’re just being a pain in the ass for no reason.”

“What’s prooooject?”

Yuji starts to explain, and Ryokun immediately zones out and goes over to his toybox.

It’s one of the rudest things Yuji has ever experienced, and Ryokun does this to him at least twice a day, where he asks a question and then just gets up and leaves Yuji talking to himself. Did he learn it somewhere? Is he just naturally this rude?

Is this cute child actually just what assholes are like when they are new to the world?

Yuji continues explaining despite the fact that he is clearly being ignored, and then raises his voice slightly to say, “…and if you complete the project, I will get you a get a real kitty to keep as a pet.”

Ryokun drops the toy dinosaur. “Kitty?”

“Mhhmm. The kind that meows and purrs and will want to play with you. Maybe a big fluffy orange one like Gany.”

The toddler grabs his stuffed cat and sits at Yuji’s feet. “I wanna kitty.”

“Are you going to do the project?”

“What’s project?”

Yuji says, “A very mean boy who hits and bites can’t have a kitty, since you might be mean to the kitty.”

“Nuh-uh, I would be nice to the kitty. I only hit people!”

He points to the poster and says, “There are five squares here,” he holds out his fingers, “every time you earn a golden apple sticker by being good, we will put it on our project. It doesn’t count if you steal them from other kids. When you earn five golden apple stickers by being good, I’ll get you a kitty.”

Yuji isn’t really asking for a lot, and he’s not expecting any miracles. There’s obviously something off about this kid, but Yuji wants to help him do better so he can have a better life. Five days of non-consecutive good behavior probably doesn’t seem like much for such a big reward, but Yuji thinks that maybe he’ll make friends when he’s being good. Besides, he’ll probably be very proud of himself if he accomplishes this task and earns a reward.

Ryokun can count to ten, but five is sort of the highest number that makes sense to him at this point, so five is the number he picked.

“What if I can’t get a golden apple sticker?”

“All you have to do is listen to your teacher and be good. No taking off your shirt and running around biting and hitting other children.”

“That’s hard.”

“Do you want a kitty or do you want to bite?’

He lets out a half-cry, half whine. “Both!”

Yuji shows him a cute cat video online and he sits and watches it, whining under his breath.

“I believe you can do it. Just think about how there’s a really special kitty out there who is waiting for you to collect your golden apple stickers so that he can come live with us.”

Of course, there’s a chance he’ll behave, get his stickers, and then go right back to being a little demon, but Yuji hopes he is not that smart. Having conversations with him at this age is strange because he will either immediately discard information he is given, or he will remember it and dwell on it obsessively. It’s hard to guess what he actually thinks about or understands.

After he gets the toddler to bed, Yuji sits down and his mind drifts back to the strange visions he had that day.

He’s not really an artist or anything, but with Ryokun’s jumbo fat crayons, he draws something ovalish, and some gray-blue hair. Some crude, mismatched eyes. Those patchwork stitches that he remembers so clearly. That cruel grin…

He leaves the drawing on the table, and the next morning, finds Ryokun standing at the short table, glaring down at the drawing with a weird, dark look on his face.

“Good morning. What’s up, brat?”

Ryokun takes one of his crayons and makes a crude, uncoordinated arc on his face, like a giant frown bigger than his face, saying each syllable as the wax is pressed harder than it should be onto the paper, “Ma…hi…to.”

Yuji just somehow knows that Ryokun has spoken the true name of the monster.

That means the monster is real.

That means Ryokun knows it too.

“Have you seen him before?”

Ryokun snaps out of his little mood in an instant. “I dunno. I’m hungry.”

Yuji asks, “Have you been seeing anything scary?”

In reply, he names a few things that are scary for a toddler, but not actually scary in general, so Yuji doesn’t think that Ryokun has had any gory visions.

The fact they both know this Mahito character from somewhere despite having no memories of meeting him is so mysterious to Yuji, but he feels like he should probably wait until Gojo returns to tell anyone about it.

If his premonition was a real thing, why did this toddler know his face?

He wondered if the poor kid had somehow met the monster, without knowing that when all of them connected, the real monster was the soul quietly resting in the toddler.

Chapter Text

In the months after Suguru Geto died, Gojo had a hard time, and it wasn’t something that he could really talk about with anyone. To most, Geto was a monster—good riddance, the world didn’t have to go through his nonsense anymore. Then there was this tiny group that knew Geto losing his life was actually very dark and sad. Those who fought their demons and won knew how sad it actually was for those who lost.

The fact that he and Geto had been together wasn’t any sort of secret. When they were only first years who were just barely starting to understand themselves, the political forces that opposed Gojo exposed them to their families, and that had been difficult for both of them.

Gojo’s grandfather had a difficult time understanding why his all-power grandson, crown jewel of the clan and wielder of the ultimate power, would be drawn to homosexuality when he could have had any woman he wanted.

This turn of events and the consequences they brought were difficult for Satoru, who wasn’t ready to come out and didn’t even know how he was. Was he gay? Bisexual? He and Geto were really deprived of the opportunity to quietly figure that out for themselves.

Gojo grandfather had been so disappointed in him; he sat him down and told him that the future head of the Gojo clan couldn’t be a homosexual. He needed to grow up, and take a wife in a few years like everyone else and have a bunch of kids because he had to maintain the legacy that he had inherited.

It was a humiliating scandal, and one that was carried on the wings of gossip to every corner of the sorcery world.

They were just kids.

Everything that happened, happened, and after Geto left, Gojo had all these experiences, chasing a high that would make him feel the way that he did when he was sixteen and loving someone for the first time. There had been all kinds of people he did all kinds of things with, but there was never a bite as sweet as his first.

His family was so frustrated with him because it wasn’t like he’d had a short phase where he went a little too hard. It had been over a decade.

When his journey with Geto actually came to an end in that alleyway, he’d felt a kind of soul-ripping, agonizing grief that he still could not describe to anyone, yet as he stumbled away from the body, feeling like he might just die from grief, he had to be Satoru Gojo.

His students needed him.

Ingrid Reksten appeared in his universe shortly thereafter, a gentle smile that greeted him when he got his coffee and breakfast at the bakery most days. She was using a different name then, but she was, or he thought she was, an outsider. Someone who didn’t know about the unfathomable grief that he was experiencing. Someone from outside the world of sorcery. He thought that to her, he wasn’t Satoru Gojo.

She endeared herself to him through corny jokes and a ‘girl living abroad’ kind of adventurous innocence. As far as he knew, she was just a random girl who had no idea what was going on with him, but her presence actually seemed quite warm to him, even in retrospect.

Eventually, he got hungry for that warmth, and when she finally got him alone, she sank her teeth into him, telling him that she was grieving the loss of her child, who had died shortly after he was born the year prior. This story seemed authentic; she had stretch marks on her belly and hips.

So he talked about his own grief with her, and he frequented her company for a while, until she was suddenly gone. She was mourning a deep loss, one that she said cut her to the core, and he was too. She showed him pictures of her baby belly and he showed her pictures of Suguru Geto while they had despairing relations elevated by pills and alcohol.

The really depressing fact for Gojo was that he came so close to finding out that woman was messing with him; he found out her name was Ingrid Reksten because it was on a bottle of medicine he saw in her bathroom when he was looking for toothpaste. He just thought at the time that she was probably lying about her name because she was taking a break from her responsibilities and her life.

At the time, he’d never heard of the Reksten clan because they weren’t significant enough to ever be mentioned to him.

The most important thing he and Ingrid had in common was that each of them were responsible for death of the one they were mourning, a fact neither of them ever mentioned.

Gojo didn’t know if her grief was necessarily inauthentic. It was perfectly possible that she was pained over what she had done to her other child and simply didn’t have regrets. After all, he didn’t regret killing Geto, but it made him wish he could die sometimes too. It was simply a violent act he had to do.

In other words, he didn’t fall for some stupid little lie. He fell for a complex system of carefully laid emotional traps and a web of manipulation. They approached him at the right time with the right sentiments and presented a narrative that caused him to wallow in the fling and never question it.

If he hadn’t witnessed the anomaly, he wouldn’t have asked the questions, wouldn’t have looked for them, and probably wouldn’t have found out about all of this until it was too late, if he ever found out at all.

Yet when he finds the Reksten siblings in Hamamatsu after days of looking all over the place for them, he’s sure of two things:

First, there’s no chance at all that Tore was responsible for the anomaly. He didn’t have the metaphorical muscle to pull off something like that according to Six Eyes. Gojo wasn’t even sure if he had the oomph to pull off a domain expansion.

Second, he confirms that there is a baby inside of Ingrid and it actually carries Limitless, proof it’s a Gojo baby.

It makes him feel sick to his stomach, as he isn’t trying to have a kid, and if he was, it wouldn’t be like this.

Tore’s technique-stealing technique is such a cheat code, but obviously, sorcerers weren’t going to put up with some curse user killing and stealing from them, and honestly, Gojo doesn’t think just from observing Tore with Six Eyes that he could capture many powerful techniques on his own.

If he stole a technique from a family, he’d be pursued by an alliance of families, which is what’s currently happening.

Gojo assumes Ingrid is still in Japan because the European sorcerers found out what they’d done before and were actively hunting them. Otherwise, the first thing they would have done when she became pregnant was get her out of Japan to decrease the chance that the Gojo clan would find out what they had done.

Unbeknownst to Gojo, in the other timeline, Tore leaving Ingrid in Japan while he goes to settle up overseas is what ultimately leads to the siblings being on different continents during the cataclysm, which in turn leads to Ingrid trying to hide her prize from the Jujutsu Society and a showdown between a more seasoned Tore and Yuta Okkotsu much later on.

In this timeline, they don’t know it yet, but their worst case scenario of being discovered by Satoru Gojo is already in progress as Gojo stands on a rooftop and watches them inside a hotel room.

He watches them for a while as they sit on a sofa in a hotel suite watching a movie.

They look a lot alike: tall, slightly reddish and light blonde hair, a number of freckles that can be considered cute, and faces that are attractive in the mathematical sense.

To an observer, they appear to snuggle more than a brother and sister who are grown adults should, and Tore rubs her little belly like he is an expectant father and not like he’s planning on killing the baby as soon as it’s born.

To Gojo, they seem like people who would fascinate someone who studies human psychology.

The really scary thing is that there’s no guarantee that this is even the second time these two have done this scam. He has two other techniques; there’s no saying they haven’t done this before, or that he hasn’t had other women in his clan do this service for him, because there’s always a chance a child wouldn’t have a technique or wouldn’t have a technique worth taking.

It’s just such an abysmally dark situation, and they are certifiable monsters.

Satoru knows he fucked up catastrophically getting involved with these people.

Tore is a menace, and the only way he can get stronger is by killing others, which he has already demonstrated he plans to do by targeting the most vulnerable sorcerers.

Since he is a curse user who has absorbed a technique that will make it impossible for him to be imprisoned, no one is trying to take him into custody to face justice. It’s the same for all powerful sorcerers; once a person can’t be easily contained, if they cause problems, the only option is to kill them.

The European authorities had contacted him earlier in the day and stressed that considering the difficult nature of the Temporal Distortion technique, it might be best if Gojo was able to contain the ‘Tore Reksten issue.’

In other words, they had heard that he was on the hunt and they were really hoping that Gojo would end Reksten so he wouldn’t return to Europe and start killing sorcerers there.

Gojo had no intention of letting Tore Reksten escape, and he didn’t disagree that it would probably be best if he dealt with Tore.

That was the responsibility of the strongest, after all, and if he had to be the executioner when it was Suguru Geto, he could certainly be the executioner for this monster.

He waits for them to separate because he actually doesn’t know what to do about Ingrid. That’s a complicated question. Tore is the part that’s not complicated, and Ingrid is probably an easier question to answer if Tore isn’t around.

He waits, quietly.

Tore leaves the hotel to go to a store down the street for beer later that night, unaware that eyes are on him.

Unfortunately, it’s not only Six Eyes that watches him from the shadows.

To Kenjaku, everything that Satoru Gojo does is worth watching, so if he does something unusual like sending an email out to all the regional sorcery organizations in the world asking for information about a time manipulation technique, well—that’s something.

Kenjaku also received this email due to one of the recipients being a Suguru Geto sympathizer, and he was fascinated, because he’d never heard of a time manipulation technique either. In theory, if space and gravity manipulation were possible, there were perhaps not actually limits on what facets of reality that sorcerers could manipulate, given the correct technique.

Master Ducreaux, who had a grandson born and killed by the Reksten siblings, actually had no problem telling anyone everything about Tore Reksten. Sorcerers, curse users, whatever. Because in the end, Ducreaux doesn’t care how it happens, he just wants the Rekstens to meet whatever the worst possible end is.

This led to the even more fascinating discovery by Kenjaku that Tore Reksten not only had Temporal Distortion, but he could take whatever techniques he wanted.

Kenjaku is fascinated.

Obsessed, even.

The more he learns about the situation, the more he thinks the Rekstens are not that different from him. They’re gross, weird people doing disgusting things that literally everyone else on earth would find absolutely repugnant. But Kenjaku made a bunch of cursed fetuses and then aborted them all, so there’s that. He even gave birth to a child himself, as the mother.

These people are basically the same as him, except stupid enough to get caught.

Gojo’s reasons for seeking Reksten are unknown to Kenjaku.

All of this is happening because in Alghera’s timeline, neither Gojo nor Kenjaku ever heard about Tore Reksten before they died, but Reksten eventually crossed Ryomen Sukuna, who took his body and Temporal Distortion. Sukuna then used Temporal Distortion to throw Yuji’s soul back in time, a phenomenon which Gojo witnessed.

Gojo became aware of Temporal Distortion as a consequence of Sukuna using the technique he stole from Reksten, and Gojo’s investigation has led to both him and Kenjaku learning about Tore Reksten.

In other words, Reksten is in danger from Kenjaku and Gojo because his future self pissed off a completely different malevolent, scheming body-snatching Japanese sorcerer. He has no idea that he is becoming the first person in human history to make a mistake so terrible that it traveled back in time to ruin his life in advance.

Of course, none of them know the events of that future. They can only see the chaos that is taking place before their own eyes, a mess of growing entanglements.

Gojo and Kenjaku both decide that something is happening in the world that is beyond their current knowledge. Forces are in motion, but the questions are what those forces are, who set them into motion, and why did they do it?

Kenjaku, who is nearby, but not nearby enough that he might ever be spotted, follows along as Uraume texts him, wondering how everything will go. He does wish he could be there, but he can’t spoil the big surprise he has for Gojo.

When Gojo is just about to attack, he suddenly detects the presence of absolutely monstrous cursed spirits in the area. One, two, three…there’s a sorcerer he doesn’t know too.

He was planning on sneaking up and killing Reksten with one blow, but the special grades activate Reksten’s senses and when he turns, he finds Satoru Gojo standing behind him.

Gojo mistakes the others as Reksten’s allies, because he is scum and that seems like the obvious conclusion to make. Reksten doesn’t know the curses but knows they’re not Gojo’s allies. And anyway, coming from a part of the world where special grade curses are so rare he has never seen one, it’s alarming to suddenly have these monsters everywhere.

Gojo isn’t sure where the extras came from and knows one of them can probably conceal their presence, so that sucks. And also, they’re in the middle of a city. It’s populated. He didn’t think it would be a problem to brain Reksten with his cursed technique since he is clearly drunk, but things have changed.

It’s not a place that he can fight multiple three special grade curses and two sorcerers. Since Reksten knows he’s there, he’s probably going to be a pain in the ass with his cheat-technique too.

He’s seen Reksten with Six Eyes, so he can catch up with later; there’s no reason to cause a mass casualty event in the middle of a city, especially since Reksten isn’t trying to kill anyone right at this moment.

Gojo decides to withdraw but is surprised to find that the others aren’t Reksten’s allies at all and carry on with attacking him in the middle of the street.

He’s not sure what to do.

He observes the curses and finds them…mysterious and powerful. They’re working together as a group under the leadership of the sorcerer, a white-haired individual with red blotches in her hair.

There’s a curse with fire abilities that are not permissible in this environment, one that can manipulate trees and natural elements, and one that seems infinitely more dangerous and disgusting. They work together, under the androgenous ice sorcerer.

These curses are powerful, and this assault force is able to put Reksten on the ropes right away, despite the fact the power of Temporal Distortion.

The technique Reksten is apparently most comfortable with is an ice technique as well, but the other ice user is clearly a near-perfect elementalist, and her movements are practiced, precise. Using only the ice element, she would smoke Reksten any day of the week.

Gojo decides to drop his veil and watch for a few seconds.

Briefly, he considers the possibility that the ice user is like Yuta and has control of these curses, but they’re not moving like they’re slaves. They’re moving like they have come to this place out of free agency and that’s extremely unusual.

Since when did curses work with sorcerers? And how rare are curses with mental faculties capable of strategic, coordinate movement? This situation is just another strange and frustrating mystery.

It’s also one that’s incredibly dangerous, and Gojo decides the only way to stop this conflict from killing civilians in the area is to end it himself.

Reksten is obviously everyone’s target, so if he eliminates the target, certainly none of the other players on the field have a reason to fight him. They don’t seem interested in that at all.

The other side seems to know that they have to stay out of melee range of Reksten or he’ll get them with Temporal Distortion, but the slowest of the curses, a hulking white tree monster, isn’t fast enough to move out of the way, and he’s able to see this technique in use and finds that from a distance, he can tell a technique is being used, but it doesn’t really look like anything from the outside.

It would be almost impossible for a person without knowledge of the technique to figure it out in a battle, making it unbeatable as long as no one knows about it. But Tore pissed off people who will tell everyone his business in hopes that something very bad will happen to him, which seems to be what is happening now.

This distance requirement helps push the battle toward a park since the attackers seem aware that if they crash into the buildings where people are, it’ll be harder to maintain distance.

Gojo thinks this other group doesn’t want to actually kill Reksten, which is more disturbing than the idea that they do.

He decides to contain Reksten and whoever else he can catch inside of his domain since that will limit the damage to the surrounding area.

The other side has clearly been warned about this possibility because they scatter like ants when he rejoins the fight, and Reksten, disoriented about being in a battle everyone is trying to hurt him, achieves divine enlightenment inside of Infinite Void.

Foreign sorcerers rarely if ever encounter domain expansions, and since Reksten’s default technique isn’t actually offensively useful, he offers a meager defense. It’s not enough and he ends up standing catatonic in Infinite Void, blood and cerebral spinal fluid oozing out of his eye sockets as he stares into the void.

Gojo had wanted to express his grievances more violently, but his fun had been ruined.

Cracks appear at the barrier of his domain; someone is trying to cast another domain on top of his from the outside, and while getting out of a domain is impossible, it’s not entirely impossible to break in.

It’s the fire curse, which is smart, because cursed spirits have more limited minds and aren’t so catastrophically damaged by his domain. If it had been the ice elementalist, this might be a fatal move for them. Even though Gojo’s domain can stand up to it, if the fire domain implodes, it might do some serious collateral damage to the city, which could turn into unacceptable casualties.

The curse with a patchwork face grabs Reksten and runs, and Gojo really isn’t sure that he cares. The man’s brain is literally leaking out of holes in his face; it’s not like he’s going to join the super evil fight club. Absolute best case scenario, the only thing he’ll be able to do is drool and howl indiscernible curses at the gods for allowing him to be turned into a vegetable. But more likely, he’ll just die in the next few minutes or hours from a brain bleed.

Gojo is annoyed as hell that he can’t just go at it with the group, but there are too many people around. There’s an offer that he can let them go and no one will die or he can fight them and people will die.

He is sure that the tree curse is the one that can hide presences from him.

Nothing about the situation went the way he wanted it to, and despite the fact that everything was already confusing enough, suddenly there are just more things that don’t make sense.

The extraordinarily powerful curses working together under a human, a human leading them in an attack? She didn’t seem like she was in charge of anything; there was strong ‘lieutenant energy’ about her. The ice user definitely wasn’t the boss.

After investigating the area, it’s clear they moved around underground before making themselves known. While he can see underground, he has to know to directly look at a spot to see it. If special grades were just walking around above ground, he’d be able to see a current of cursed energy in the air.

In addition to the tree curse’s ability to conceal aura, this had been enough to prevent him from detecting their presence.

While he looks around for clues, Uraume and the special grades deliver Reksten to the abandoned building where they’d hurriedly set up only an hour before the attack.

Kenjaku is pleased to see that they secured their prize.

The original plan was to try and intercept Reksten and talk him into coming along willingly, but that required them to find Tore Reksten before Gojo did, and that just didn’t happen.

Uraume is annoyed at Kenjaku for sending her on this ‘errand’ because tempting the most powerful sorcerer on earth with violence is not a ‘side quest,’ it’s attempted suicide.

Kenjaku told them to bring Reksten back even if he was dead, and while the curses don’t know why he would want a corpse, Uraume certainly does.

It’s Gojo’s second time to unknowingly let a dangerous vessel slip right out of his fingers and into Kenjaku’s grasp.

After assessing Reksten’s condition, Kenjaku says, “How convenient! It looks like Satoru Gojo has essentially lobotomized him for us, which should make it much easier for us to keep him until I am ready.”

Mahito asks, “What are you going to do with a human with a destroyed brain?”

“He doesn’t need a brain for what I need him for. This is actually the best outcome. His body will stay in good condition, but he won’t cause us any trouble. I am incredibly pleased by this turn of events, actually. Although we do need to leave the area as soon as possible before you-know-who has time to look for us,” Kenjaku explains.

As they leave the city, Gojo is left with whatever the hell this battle has been. He regrets not fighting the curses and risking the locals before he even finishes a cursory investigation of the area.

When he finishes up, he thinks about how he will explain this to the Jujutsu Society since this incident requires an explanation. There weren’t any civilian casualties because the battle happened so late at night and broke out in an area where many stores were closed, but there was a lot of property damage. The Jujutsu Society’s investigators were going to know something pretty serious went down and that extremely powerful curses were in this area for some reason.

If he’d known other attackers were nearby, he would have played his hand much differently.

Both this situation and the overall predicament he is in remind him that despite being the strongest, sometimes he just really fucks up.

At some point, he realizes he is procrastinating the next item on his to-do list because he does not want to do it.

Satoru doesn’t even really know what he wants to do?

When he goes to the hotel room where he saw Ingrid with her brother, she’s already fled on foot after hearing the battle and almost makes it to the train station when a familiar white Ferrari screeches to a halt on the sidewalk.

Her greatest fear was that all that noise down the street had been Gojo.

“S-Satoru. Did you hurt my brother?”

“Yeah, I scrambled his brain like a goddamned egg. Get in the car,” he growls.

Obviously, he is the most powerful living creature on earth and she’s a human with no cursed energy, so Ingrid knows she can say no, but it’s not going to do any good. It’s not like he can’t force her to do what he wants, and if she makes him get out of the car, she assumes it’ll be worse.

She gets in, and he pulls off before she even finishes fastening her safety belt.

For a long time, he is silent, his eyes occasionally cutting over to one side to peer at her belly.

“Where are we going?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Where is Tore?”

“Probably being eaten by cursed spirits. Do you guys know a man or woman with an ice ability and three special grade curses?”

She answers, “What do you mean ‘know’ special grade curses? I’ve never even seen a special grade curse!”

What is he even supposed to do now?

He feels like most people would feel this is an asshole sentiment, but he doesn’t want this baby to be born, and he’s absolutely sure that if he just makes her get out of the car, someone will kill her. This family has activated mutual protection pacts of an entire continent of sorcerers, and thanks to Gojo putting feelers out for a time manipulation technique and Master Ducreaux telling everyone all the business in hopes it results in a bad ending, it seems like ‘bad ending’ is just the default outcome for this woman.

She is basically already toast.

“How far along are you?”

“Twelve weeks.”

“Is it healthy?”

“Yes, everything is going well so far.”

She panics about her brother, hoping her cell phone will ring, but it doesn’t.

When he realizes she has her cell phone with her, he snatches it and throws it out the window so no one can use it to track where she is.

Satoru eventually decides that he will take her to the Gojo clan estate and figure out what to do from there. Without Tore, Ingrid probably doesn’t want it to be born either. Having an abortion and then setting her free to meet whatever fate awaited her seems like the easiest way to deal with the situation.

At the same time, he can tell that that the baby she’s carrying is going to powerful, probably to the point that if he had fifty kids with other women, there probably wouldn’t be another one like this. This life will potentially be the future of his clan, and a star in the future generation.

Extinguishing that potential because he doesn’t want to face further consequences for his own actions would be a mistake, not just morally but also strategically.

Also, he just absolutely does not want this woman to have his baby, doesn’t want to have a baby with this woman, doesn’t want this baby to exist at all. His very soul rejects this entire situation.

As much as Satoru loves being a teacher and taking care of kids, he hasn’t really been that into having his own kid. At some point, it is basically inevitable. He is the product of selective breeding and must acknowledge that it is necessary, but he assumed he’d just deal with that later on, and in different circumstances.

In his life plan, at some point in his thirties, he would accept an arranged marriage with someone he could tolerate, pass on the family genes, and continue to focus on sorcery. Would he be a good dad in that distant future? Yeah, probably.

Does he want to be a dad right now, with this baby-killing woman? No.

Gojo doesn’t really think of abortion as being immoral in any sort of way in the general sense, but the more he thinks of it, the more he thinks that this option is strategically disadvantageous and the equivalent of making an unborn child bear the consequences of the choices adults made.

It’s just a really long drive, and he’s left with way too much time to think about how much he hates both the options and outcomes.

Ingrid is silent during the ride, anxious about her brother and her situation. Satoru implied he didn’t die during the attack, but clearly things had gone very wrong for him. She doesn’t know what Satoru is going to do to her, but he’s not exactly a nice guy. After all, the only reason she was able to lead him around by the nose is because he was grieving having killed his first lover. It’s not like he’ll hesitate if he decides he wants her to die as well.

She’s not sure if her baby will offer her any protection, as he remains silent but looks over at her belly with a rather sinister look on his face now and then, until he puts his blindfold on and stops looking altogether. Since she doesn’t know if Tore has died or not, she feels like she should do her best to save herself and her baby just in case she is still able to reunite with her brother later, although that would be dependent on many things happening.

When they arrive at the massive, sprawling Gojo estate, a huge property outside of Kyoto, a massive iron gate opens to the walled property, and Gojo parks in a big parking garage near the entrance.

Since the estate is fifteen centuries old, there aren’t paths wide enough for cars through the ancient gardens, and after ordering her to follow him, they follow a winding stone path under massive trees and over a stream, dimly lit by little lights placed here and there.

There are buildings dotting the various paths, traditionally styled dark wood with blue, curved roofs. The main building encloses a massive central garden, but they walk past that to a cottage further along the path.

The door isn’t locked, and when he slides it open, he kicks off his shoes and looks around. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living area, and a nice bath.

Sakura Cottage is actually a very pretty little house, so while he’s sure Ingrid is upset about her brother and her loss of freedom and also all the people trying to kill her, he doesn’t really think she’s entitled to any complaints, all things considered.

This cottage was built by his grandfather before he died for his very young, pretty foreign mistress, so Gojo knew his grandmother was going to be pissed off to see her grandson bringing a foreign woman who isn’t his wife to stay there.

Gojo says, “You’ll be staying here. As long as you don’t try to run, I won’t chain you up. This estate is ancient, and we do have a dungeon. You will stay inside at all times, no exceptions.”

“I’m a prisoner? What kind of monster imprisons a pregnant woman?”

Gojo answers, “I’m a mostly nice guy, but you victimized me, lady. Besides, this is protective custody for a member of the Gojo clan. You can leave once you’ve returned what you stole from this clan, and we won’t take our own vengeance against you. But you will leave here immediately after, and those people you pissed off before we met are going to get you as soon as you leave here.”

Ingrid nervously asks, “You would separate a child from its mother?”

“Is that a serious question?”

He has no intention of ever looking at or speaking to this woman again after this moment, and he has already decided to put someone else in his clan in charge of managing her until she gives birth and leaves the property.

Adopting a policy of ‘live and let live’ seems like the best thing he can do even though he feels entitled to vengeance.

At the moment, Satoru is full of intensely negative emotions about this whole incident, but he suspects that once he starts to clear some of that out of his mind that he’ll feel better about the baby. Even if his feelings only make it as far as neutral, he can make sure it grows up well and has a good life.

Gojo is down and in a remarkably sour mood once he leaves the cottage and sends one of the clan’s attendants to go deal with getting her whatever she needs to settle in. This has arguably been one of the worst days of his life that didn’t involve someone cared about dying.

Between having to drive around for days looking for the dumbass siblings, confirming Ingrid was pregnant with his baby, being forced to reflect on what a cruel and heartless scheme she actually ran against him, not realizing there were other players coming for Reksten, not positioning his attack better so he could fight more when the battle expanded, not knowing what happened to Reksten, not being able to pursue the special grades, learning about these unregistered special grades…

This whole day has been shit, and now he has to deal with an avalanche of consequences and ‘I told you so’s’ that he really doesn’t want to hear from his family.

Once he gets finished with that, he has to go make a report to the Jujutsu Society about how he ended up in a conflict in a populated area in Hamamatsu with three unregistered special grades while he was out for ‘personal reasons.’

XXX

While Gojo is so frustrated that he’s ready to explode, Kenjaku awakens the next morning with a renewed sense of vigor.

Kenjaku remains unaware of the anomaly, or what sent Gojo to look for Tore Reksten, but Kenjaku is thrilled, pleased, and incredible excited about the outcome of the impromptu operation.

By then, he and Uraume have returned to their secret base with their prize, and while they enjoy a breakfast prepared by Uraume over her complaints about the risk involved in the mission, he takes in the sunshine pouring into the dining area through big sliding doors.

“Isn’t it a beautiful morning, my friend?”

Uraume narrows her eyes and asks, “Are you even listening?”

“No, I’m in a good mood, and I can’t be bothered with the discouraging words of a naysayer.”

Is it a beautiful, perfect morning, with views of sun-kissed fields outside?

Is the meal not delicious?

The white-haired woman finds Kenjaku’s joyous mood to be infuriating, since he was not the one who was put at risk. If Gojo had decided it was more important to eliminate the special grades than to prevent civilian casualties, he probably would have killed every single one of them, and Kenjaku really thought that was acceptable as long as he got his hands on the time manipulation technique.

While the curses had been hyped that Gojo didn’t seem very strong to them, Uraume tried her best to explain that Gojo essentially let them win without putting up a real fight because if he gave them his all, several city blocks would have been destroyed. They don’t really accept this information because they are cursed spirits, and even intelligent cursed spirits are still sort of dumb.

Infinite Void left Tore Reksten in a vegetative state that was probably permanent unless someone used reverse curse technique to heal him, but no one was going to do that. For Kenjaku, this was a wonderful outcome because he wasn’t ready to change vessels, and at the same time, it sounded like Reksten would have been difficult to keep as a prisoner if his brain still functioned normally.

And so, Kenjaku now possesses the technique that Sukuna used to destroy the future.

It’s such an unexpected boon, a blessing he didn’t even know existed a week ago, and now, a mysterious power that he will own. He ponders what he can do with it, what the limits are, if there are limits?

There is a part of him that is almost giddy with excitement, since he is very old, and it is very rare for something completely new to exist in his mind.

After his meal, he moves on to a project he has been working on.

In an empty bedroom, he has a massive pinboard covered in notes, and when Uraume follows him there, she finds this board is new and it seems to be the product of madness or mental disease of some sort, pieces of yarn and some notes stuck up with red question marks.

“What is this?” she asks.

Kenjaku answers, “As you know, our plans have been complicated by a massive amount of missing information, like knowledge has been deleted from the world. At least, it has been deleted from our minds.”

“What about it?”

The mastermind explains, “In your case, we know that you are very closely linked to whatever information has disappeared from the world. If I think back to all of the things I’ve done, my actions usually make sense to me because I still retain the information I had when I made them.

“If I look back at something I did and it no longer makes sense to me, it means that information that motivated me to do it has been removed. When I think about why Jogo is with us, I understand that because no information about Jogo is missing. But I can’t remember why you and I are together, how we met, or any material details about our partnership.”

He holds up a piece of paper with a huge circle cut out of the middle. “You have no way of knowing where the rest of this piece of paper is. I wrote a message on it, but you don’t know what that message is because that part has been cut out. You don’t know who cut the paper, or their reasons for doing it, or how it was done. What you can determine by looking at the whole page is the size and shape of what is missing.

“We may not be able to grasp the fine details, but there are certainly clues about this forbidden knowledge that we can gain if we are able to determine the size and shape of this informational void. In other words, we can learn some part of what we’ve forgotten by examining the gaps in our consciousness.”

Uraume nods in understanding that Kenjaku is trying to recover whatever knowledge he can by examining the context surrounding the missing information.

Kenjaku says, “Sixteen years ago, I gave birth to a child.”

“What?! Why? As a woman?”

“Yes! I don’t know why I did it. It doesn’t make sense to me now. I possessed this woman’s body and slept with her husband. It was quite scandalous even for me. If I’m missing maybe thirty percent of my knowledge about you, I’m missing ninety-five percent of my knowledge about this incident. Whatever we have forgotten, it is very closely related to the child, Yuji Itadori.

“I believe we will be able to determine much more about what knowledge was lost if we can determine who Yuji Itadori is and what purpose he serves in the world. Unfortunately, and probably not coincidentally, he’s become someone inaccessible to me. For some reason, in this tiny window of time when chaos has emerged, Satoru Gojo recruited him as a sorcerer. The fact that this happened seemingly at the same time as this Great Forgetting is telling, as is the fact that right after, Gojo broadcast the fact he was looking for someone with a time manipulation technique.”

Uraume asks, “You think Gojo caused us to forget?”

“No. Gojo is a nosy, messy busybody who meddles in affairs because there are not forces that limit him properly. It’s more likely that Itadori is the one who matters and Gojo has inserted himself into the situation unnecessarily to make things difficult for us.”

After listening to him explain what a pain in the ass Gojo is, she decides it’s not worth pointing out that Gojo has made it so that it is difficult for Kenjaku to approach his students because that is his job as their teacher. If horrible villains like Kenjaku could just menace the student sorcerers, they’d probably all just die.

The issue that Kenjaku presents to sorcerers in each era he comes across is age. Kenjaku is a thousand years old and Gojo is in his late twenties, and while Gojo certainly has the raw power to eliminate any of them including Kenjaku, it’s unlikely that the younger sorcerer will ever gain a strategic advantage purely from devising a better strategy than Kenjaku.

While Gojo is confident that no one can defeat him in battle, Kenjaku has no intention of trying to overpower him. Gojo is young and arrogant, and he will make the exact mistakes that Kenjaku expects him to make.

The right decision for Gojo to make in Hamamatsu was to kill her, kill the curses, and kill Tore Reksten, even if it meant civilian fatalities. If he’d done that, Kenjaku would have been profoundly weakened. Losing Mahito would have further crippled basically every plan he had.

When the bodies start piling up, Uraume believes Gojo will realize that he had a chance to stop everything before it started and he failed over concerns about a number of civilian casualties that will be nothing compared to what happens later.

The fixation on Yuji Itadori leaves Uraume wondering if he and she both have a connection to the erased knowledge, if they also have a connection to each other? If so, had Kenjaku been hiding this connection previously?

Uraume can’t remember why she came to this era, but she knows it wasn’t out of loyalty to Kenjaku or a belief in what he was doing. On a good day, Kenjaku was a mad scientist playing with dangerous chemicals without regard for the consequences. Uraume didn’t really think he was a genius or anything like that.

Being able to outsmart someone who was one thousand years younger wasn’t exactly a sign of great intelligence or anything.

If Kenjaku was really smart, he would have realized Gojo was obviously a victim of the Reksten siblings because it seemed obvious to Uraume. Had they grabbed the woman and her brother, Kenjaku might have really been able to play with fire. But as a Sugawara, the idea of this gross brain of a man getting his hands on the family’s treasured gifts grosses Uraume out, and so she didn’t say anything.

Uraume contemplates if perhaps she should try to contact Yuji and see if she can remember anything, and then realizes that Kenjaku told her about him specifically because he wants her to do that. It’s not like he can get anywhere near one of Gojo’s students wearing Suguru Geto’s face.

He’s really just baiting her to go risk getting clobbered by Gojo, and she decides she won’t take the bait for now.

Kenjaku looks up from his pinboard to find Uraume staring at him in disgust and asks, “You’re looking at me like I’m a giant pile of garbage on the side of the road.”

Uraume answers, “Being in such a handsome body really doesn’t suit you.”

Then, she smiles.

“That was incredibly unnecessary. Are you still mad about last night?” he asks, letting out a nervous laugh.

“I have a mission, and while I do not remember what it is, I am certain it was not to waste my life assisting you with your imbecilic, hare-brained schemes.”

Kenjaku says, “I’m going to evolve humankind in the grandest game of all. Can you imagine the violence? A plan of inescapable violence and fighting.”

Uraume answers, “It’s not really an accomplishment to make sorcerers fight each other. They’ll literally do it for no reason. Manipulating sorcerers into fighting each other is like manipulating a hungry dog to eat a steak. You’re such a mastermind, so smart, so insightful, a master schemer indeed, making all those hungry dogs eat exactly what they were craving all along.”

“What an icy tart you are today.”

“I’m going outside. That weird sour smell that seems to be wherever you are is unpleasant.”

XXX

While Kenjaku has zeroed in on Yuji as being closely related to whatever has gone wrong with his plan, Yuji himself is having a good morning.

He awakens to the familiar feeling of his bed being invaded. The top bunk, bottom bunk situation does absolutely nothing to keep Ryokun from invading his sleeping area. After only one week, he has learned that he can throw his toys up and then climb up, and can even make it to the top holding a snack in one hand after taking it from a cabinet he shouldn’t be able to reach.

Child safety latches posed a challenge for him only once.

Yuji opens his eyes and Ryokun is there in his tiger pajamas, ripping open a bag of fruit snacks with his teeth.

“Good morning,” Yuji mumbles.

“Good morning, you wanna snack?”

“We should get ready to go down to the cafeteria.”

“Okay, but…”

“But what?”

Ryokun puts his snack aside, and exclaims as he jumps on Yuji, “I’m a tiger! Rawrrrrrrrrrr!”

They have a little wrestle, as has become their custom, and Yuji tickles Ryokun until he is reduced to scream-giggling, kicking his feet and unable to control his body anymore.

They get dressed and ready for the day and meet with Megumi and Nobara in the cafeteria. It’s a little weird that they’re the only three kids in their class and one of them has a child for some reason, but they have an all right time.

After they walk together to drop Ryokun off at daycare, they head to the train for a planned shopping trip and day off.

The three teenagers are free to do whatever they want for the day, they have money, and two of them are new to Tokyo, so they set out on a grand adventure.

They speculate about the cause of Gojo’s unexpected absence throughout the trip, although Megumi, who has known Gojo for much longer, is actually very concerned about whatever is going on with their teacher.

In all the time that he’s known Gojo, he’s never known the sorcerer to disconnect from them like he has. He’s sure if he called Gojo with a serious problem, Gojo would show up and help, but something is obviously going on with him.  

Sometimes he travels for work, because if a powerful curse is born in a country without any sorcerers, what else can they do but make an appeal to someone who can help them? It doesn’t sound like that’s the issue.

On top of that, they overheard rumors at breakfast that something had happened with Gojo the night before, some dust up he had even though he was supposed to be dealing with a personal emergency.

When they leave the station at Shinjuku, for a split second, Yuji sees a flash of the place being absolutely wrecked, a sea of rubble as far as the eye can see, yet overgrown with vines and plants like it has been destroyed for a while.

Then he blinks, and he’s still surrounded by shops and people.

It’s only for a split second, and he pushes it out of his mind, attributing it to the strange, unwanted noise that keeps happening in his mind. Just when he starts to relax while they’re walking around, he has another flash of the place being freshly destroyed, not overgrown, smoldering.

Yuji feels anxious, and like if he stays, he’s going to have more of these, so he politely tells the others that he’s going to head back on his own, and they immediately reject this and travel with him to the next stop on their tour, where nothing happens.

Megumi isn’t as stressed as Yuji is because he’s not experiencing brief visions of an apocalyptic future, but he feels the distinct feeling that they are being watched while they are in Shinjuku, and then after for two more stops.

When he texts Nanami, Nanami knows Megumi’s instincts are very sharp because he’s already been training for a while, and that if he feels like someone is watching them, he’s probably right. He sends a car to pick them up and rides along, just in case, but when he arrives, nothing has happened and they’re able to return without incident.

It’s just another mysterious event in a chain of growing complexities and mysteries that leaves Nanami on edge as they all move into a future that suddenly seems riddled with uncertainties.

Chapter Text

Satoru’s Grandmother doesn’t offer any of her opinions about the situation at hand when he lays it all out for her.

Satoru knows he has created a terrible situation for himself, and that she’s probably angry and disappointed. But it’s an opportunity for her to get what she wants, and he doesn’t really realize it until he goes to have tea with her late in the afternoon in a teahouse nestled in the gardens of the clan estate.

When he arrives, there’s a woman there, Chiyo Katsuragi.

He doesn’t know her well, but she’s the proverbial pick of the litter as far as unmarried clan girls are concerned. Satoru mostly knows about her because his grandmother tried to convince him to court her a couple of years ago, and when he declined, the two women still spent time together and ended up becoming friends.

Chiyo is average height, pretty, with black hair and gray eyes. A nice girl, but the whole ecosystem of arranged marriages and clan stuff is uncomfortable for him and he doesn’t like it.

His grandmother explains everything in a rather even tone, like she’s not talking about everyone’s most sensitive business.

The Katsuragi clan’s elders are close to the Zenin clan, and they are well into negotiations to arrange for her to marry Naoya Zenin the following spring. Politically, this is good for them and good for the Zenins. It’s incredibly bad for Chiyo, which all the involved parties know. Her family is more interested in the political gain than they are worried about sending Chiyo away to Naoya.

It's a story that’s played out a thousand times in their world, and it’ll keep playing out forever. Because at the end of the day, sorcery families have been practicing eugenics since prehistoric times and they’re going to keep doing it forever. The ones who pay the price for this dark art are always the women that are sent here or there to bear children for powerful men.

His grandmother proposes that Chiyo and Satoru immediately elope and tell her clan that they’ve had relations and that she is three months pregnant. Katsuragi house will be furious, but once a pregnancy has happened, a marriage is the only reasonable outcome.

This deletes the Zenin clan from the equation and gives Satoru the ability to cover up his indiscretion because it creates a cover story for the baby that’s going to show up.

Obviously, it’s better for him if everyone thinks he got a clan girl pregnant and married her in a hurry than for the actual truth to get out. ‘Got a girl pregnant’ is bad, but it’s not ‘romanced a serial killer’ bad.

It requires Chiyo to suffer the humiliation of being publicly known for getting pregnant out of wedlock, while her family was trying to marry her to someone else. It maybe caused problems between the Katsuragi and Zenin clans and the Gojo clan and both clans as well.

His grandmother points out that while all parties benefit from this arrangement except the Katsuragi and Zenin clans, the person that will be most helped by this agreement is the baby, who doesn’t necessarily need to know the truth. It can just be their child, plain and simple, no need for scandal.

Since the Jujutsu Society is unaware of that Gojo was personally entangled with the Rekstens and they didn’t know Ingrid was being held by the Gojo clan, his grandmother told him he could probably get away with just never telling them about that side of things and sticking to the story that everything that happened was because of his other investigation into the anomaly.

Short of running off from her clan, this is likely Katsuragi’s last chance to avoid Naoya Zenin, Satoru’s last chance to avoid the kind of reputational damage that will follow him to the grave, the only chance to make a normal situation for the baby, and his grandmother’s opportunity to get him to marry her favorite.

This sort of fate was probably always inescapable for him. He wasn’t expecting to fall madly in love and marry. At some point, there was always going to be some kind of deal, and so he accepts this fate just like his soon-to-be bride does.

His grandmother is sufficiently pleased with this outcome and sends them on an errand to get their marriage certificate.

Chiyo follows behind him on the path to the parking garage in a white sundress. Her hair is styled in big curls and is the kind of black that gives off a bluish glint in the sun. She’s definitely easy on the eyes, but he can tell from how she carries herself that she’s probably been really sheltered. In some clans, women like her aren’t allowed to ever be alone with a man from outside the clan without a chaperone.

“Your hair reminds me of a raven’s feathers,” he comments as he looks back, offering his arm.

She takes it and blushes as she looks away.

He says, “I don’t really have the bandwidth right now to be married, and I don’t think you really want to be living that life for now, so I think we should just chill out and do things on our own time. Are you okay with that? I’m grateful to you for saving my ass here, but there’s a lot going on right now. I need to be with my students. I don’t think you want to plunge right into being married to me either. After all, we don’t know each other.”

She answers, “I would appreciate that, actually. I like to think I’m a very bold person, but I don’t feel that way right now. You can leave this baby situation to me. I can handle that much for you.”

They are cautiously pleasant to one another, and he opens the car door for her, does all the gentlemanly things.

Once they get their certificate, he takes her back to the clan estate, gives her a tour of the master’s wing of the main house, and then after dinner in the garden, returns to Tokyo via warp because there was just no way he was going to drive his car back. Maybe he would get someone else to do it, maybe it would be stranded in Kyoto forever.

The only reason he brought it instead of warping everywhere was so he could perhaps kidnap a woman who might not reasonably tolerate being warped across the countryside due to the fact she has no cursed energy and is pregnant. Totally normal stuff a guy does, right?

He knows his grandmother is right about keeping his situation with Ingrid a secret. If the Jujutsu Society elders find out, they’ll probably insist on taking her into custody, and then who knows what will happen. Whatever trouble she gets into also happens to the Gojo baby, so not only as the father but also the head of the clan, he has a responsibility to do what he can.

Chiyo creates an avenue he can use to paint a different picture about what happened. The fact that he’s married is a matter of public record, and lying about Chiyo being pregnant is the kind of gossip that is going to rip through the sorcery community like wildfire. Everyone was probably going to know within twenty-four hours, that’s how hot that gossip was going to be.

He tells the elders the next morning he took off work because he found out his secret girl was pregnant and when they were secretly meeting about it, they happened to be in Hamamatsu. While there, he coincidentally happened to sense with Six Eyes that Reksten was about to be attacked by special grades, and he tried to diffuse the situation with minimal casualties.

It’s obvious they don’t fully buy his story, but they don’t have grounds to question him either. Knowing he was lying about some things didn’t mean they would ever get the truth, and it wasn’t the first time he’d lied to them. They also lied to him whenever it suited them.

By the time the next morning comes around, gossip is already floating around that Gojo disappeared for a few days because he’d been having illicit relations with a girl who was going to be married into the Zenin clan and she got pregnant, prompting them to run off and elope without permission from anyone.

Checking his phone, he has missed calls from the old man at Katsuragi house, from Naobito Zenin, even from Naoya Zenin. Gojo has no interest in talking to any of these people, so he simply continues to ignore all of them. After all, in this false but juicy story, Chiyo is already pregnant. It’s not like the Zenin clan would want her now, or that the Katsuragi clan wouldn’t be freaked out if he didn’t marry her.

The outrage is hilarious, as making up a fake pregnancy is one of the bitchiest, most dramatic things a human being can do, and yet they are doing it to cover up something even more scandalous. The drama is so juicy that it keeps people from asking any other difficult questions.

A courier drops off a package early from his new wife which contains a platinum wedding band, some framed pictures of her that he can sprinkle around his universe for authenticity, a list of quick facts people might ask him about her, and a cardboard cake box that contains homemade chocolate cupcakes.

Gojo puts on his wedding band, places a picture in his apartment, in his office, in his classroom. He quickly memorizes his quick facts, so no one realizes he didn’t know how old his wife was or literally anything about her, like her age, and if she has siblings.

The idea that he might marry someone who would send a courier from Kyoto to Tokyo with cupcakes is believable.

Sugar and a sincere belief that his personal life might actually be okay lift his spirits and allow him to turn his attention back to what really matters: his first years were perhaps stalked in public, and Yuji has apparently been experiencing traumatic hallucinations.

He catches up with Yuji privately first, meeting him in the courtyard with a smile and an offer of treats.

“You’re back!”

“Yep! Sorry about my absence. How did you guys manage with Nanami?”

“We had a good time. Nanami is great.”

“Right? But anyway, I hear you’ve been hallucinating.”

Yuji tells him of the four times he’s seen these strange visions: when he approached Nanami in this very courtyard and saw him explode from the waist up, and when he met Nobara and saw a vision of her head exploding. Then in Shinjuku, he saw the area destroyed and overgrown, like it had been totally wrecked and never cleaned up for years and years with plants growing all through the rubble. And secondly, he saw it in a state that seemed to be more recently destroyed, with no plant overgrowth and smoldering fires, like the destructive event had just happened.

Is he unwell?

Yuji, glad he’s finally getting to talk to Gojo about what’s going on with him, explains that while he understands why Nanami thought it was stress, he didn’t agree. Despite all the changes in his life, Yuji felt happy in the sense that he was enjoying training and school and was even having a good time with Ryokun.

The truth that Yuji was learning about himself was that he was really okay with everything that was happening so far except for these strange visions.

“In the vision I had of Nanami and Kugisaki, the same person or thing or whatever killed both of them. It was a curse with these weird stitch marks on its face. Frankenstein-ish. I’m not an artist or anything, but I sort of drew a picture of it with Ryokun’s crayons.

“When I woke up the next morning, Ryokun was staring down at it like he was mad and he said this name, Mahito, and I just somehow knew that was the guy’s name.”

This is a weird and bad coincidence, because Gojo just saw a curse with weird stitches all over his face too.

Gojo had also sketched the three curses because curses can’t be photographed and therefore learning how to depict them is actually a pretty foundational sorcery skill. The sketches that sorcerers make of curses are the only images that ever exist of them, so being able to accurately depict and describe them is critical.

He takes out his phone and shows Yuji a picture of the stitched curse.

“Oh my god, that’s him. Did you have a vision too?!”

With a shake of his head, Gojo answers, “I ran into this guy in Hamamatsu while I was out.”

“So he’s real.”

“Yes.”

Gojo is quiet for a while, and Yuji asks, “Is it possible that I’m actually seeing the future, is that a thing? Are there techniques like that?”

“I don’t think that’s what’s happening here.”

“Then what?”

They talk for a while, and Yuji does his best to answer Gojo’s questions, many of which center on the strange sentiments that Yuji feels at times: a powerful sense of déjà vu, the feeling he already knows people when he meets them, the strange sensation that he hasn’t seen someone he just met for a very long time, the relief and job he felt when he saw both Gojo and Nanami for the first time, how he called Nanami ‘Nanamin’ under his breath before even meeting him.

The fact Ryokun already knew their names when he appeared in the world seemingly out of nowhere is perplexing as well.

Ryokun is a baby who has no recollection of a past and can’t even accurately answer simple questions about what happened to him last week, so Yuji is probably the only source of useful information.

Yuji says, “In some ways, I feel like myself, but since that night, maybe I also feel like someone else.”

Knowing that Yuji is seeing these images, there is a clear possibility that presents itself to Satoru, one that almost scares him.

The anomaly was to his senses, a ‘slice’ that cut through the fabric of reality, a force against their world from somewhere else. According to Tengen, this slice even affected the flow of time, suggesting it was a cut not only against the world and its three dimensions, but also the fourth dimension.

After seeing Reksten use Temporal Distortion, Gojo feels like that technique could have created the unexplainable elements of the anomaly, but Reksten certainly wasn’t strong enough to do it.

The fact the primary mechanism of the anomaly is a cut and both Yuji and Ryokun have a cutting technique seems incredibly relevant.

They go to an empty classroom together, and Gojo continues to try and digest the information, because there is enough of it that he should be able to understand at least something. If he was putting together a jigsaw puzzle with five thousand pieces, the first thing he’d do is group the pieces with similar coloring and start fitting them together. If he repeated this process, he would eventually be able to see the image that the pieces form.

What can they discern based on what is known?

Ryokun’s memory is not reliable or useful, but Yuji doesn’t have any holes in his mind. While Gojo as a sorcerer forgot a massive amount of information that night when the anomaly happened, Yuji doesn’t have any gaps in his memory as far as Yuji himself is able to tell. This leads to the obvious conclusion that whatever information was erased, it was related to sorcery and because Yuji had nothing to do with the sorcery community, he didn’t possess any of it in the first place.

Since Tengen mentioned that there was a time manipulation facet to the anomaly, Gojo has wondered if the anomaly was a time travel phenomenon. It sounds ridiculous, but he just knows that he saw something spectacular. Maybe something that had never happened in the history of the world and might not ever happen again.

Did Yuji’s soul come from the future?

It was silly to think sorcery could do that.

Still, Satoru is left with his puzzle pieces.

Yuji notes that Gojo has become incredibly quiet and uncharacteristically absent after he finishes asking questions, and he can practically hear all the poor gears in Gojo’s head that the teacher is forcing to turn.

Gojo thinks he is intelligent, but there is a difference between the level of intelligence required to do normal things and whatever the hell is going on here.

Yuji feels like he’s caused a lot of trouble for all these people.

Gojo asks, “Deep inside, in your gut, do you think the things you’re seeing are fictional?”

“No. I think maybe they’re visions of the future, and that scares me.”

The existence of Patchface is proof that Yuji’s visions aren’t entirely false. After meeting him only one time, Gojo is absolutely certain he could definitely kill Nanami if he got a clear shot, and a student wouldn’t be an issue. The fact Yuji knew his appearance and his technique is very telling.

At some point, the most obvious theory becomes the one that Satoru can’t cast reasonable doubt on within his mind anymore.

“Yuji, I believe that you might be a time traveler…like, maybe a later version of yourself came here and merged with you. The fact that Patchface is real means that you do have knowledge of things you haven’t experienced. No one in the Jujutsu Society knew about Patchface, and before I told you he was real, you knew his face, his name, and the means by which he could kill a sorcerer.

“On the night that we met, some sort of massive curse ripped open this world and someone came in from the outside. I’ve been convinced it was either you or Ryokun, but probably both of you, honestly. Maybe you are similar enough that you were mistaken as one person.

“DNA tests with sorcerers can be a little weird because we’re genetically a little different. Ryokun could be your kid from the future or something. Maybe the future just went really wrong, and you found a way to go back and fix it, and you brought him here.”

Was Ryokun his son? Was he a dad?

The question ‘am I a dad’ makes Yuji feel inexplicably sad and angry, and his eyes sting, like with Nanami.

Gojo asks, “Eh? What’s wrong?”

Yuji dabs tears from his eyes. “I was just trying to figure out if I feel like I’m a dad.”

“That’s concerning.”

“No kidding. Shit.”

At the same time, the question ‘is Ryokun my son’ is met with a resounding sense of ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT.’

Yuji quickly pushes the question out of his mind; whatever is in that box, he knows he doesn’t want to look inside.

Gojo says, “My working theory is that your soul came and merged with your existing soul in your body. Since humans store memories in their brains, probably the only information you took with you was the stuff that affected your very soul. Your happiest, scariest, saddest, angriest moments.”

“That doesn’t seem very useful.”

“If you were involved in all the key stuff that happened, these little visions might give us more clues we can use. I don’t want to make light of the fact this obviously seriously affects your mental health, and mental health is incredibly important, but if we could cause you to see more of these flashes, we might be able to find a better future for ourselves.”

Yuji frowns. “You want to try and make me see more visions?”

“Yes. I believe we can probably avoid some of these events if we know they are coming. I’m about to call Yuta Okkotsu home and tell him to follow Kugisaki around every time she leaves this campus no matter where she goes. Therefore, when the convergence of you, Nanami, and Kugisaki happens, Yuta will be there too. That will probably change the outcome.”

Had Gojo had known about this vision before he met Mahito, he would have pursued him and just accepted the civilians who would be killed. If asked how many civilian casualties he would allow to die save one sorcerer, the answer was a lot, because every sorcerer saved thousands of human lives. Sorcerer lives were just more valuable. One hundred and fifty million people lived in Japan, but there were only a couple of dozen like Nanami. Taking even one away meant consequences for everyone.

Gojo wonders how time travel works? Like, how did it happen? Could they utilize it again? Since a massive amount of information was apparently erased from human consciousness at the moment this happened, Gojo thinks Tengen is right that since humans have done it once, the gods erased all the footprints because who wouldn’t want to go back in time and fix a problem?

What would he do what that kind of power?

There’s a face that comes to mind…

Yuji says, “If I did travel through time, kind of inconvenient I can’t remember anything useful.”

Gojo answers, “Well, we store our memories in our brains, and in theory, it’s probably not possible to send an actual human body back in time.”

“Why?”

Gojo says, “You would violate the laws of existence. Everything that has ever existed or will ever exist has existed since the moment of the Big Bang. Every atom in your body started out as energy, and then became subatomic particles, and then achieved mass and became a hydrogen or helium atom, only to be smooshed in a star into sometimes more complex atoms before the star explodes and hurls them out into the universe, where they’d begin gravitational spin with other atoms and become part of a new star and begin the process again, until they ended up in a swirling dust cloud that became our solar system where they ended up spinning into this planet, where eventually biological machines that churn matter evolved to harness the energy of the world.

“Every atom in your body has its own timeline that begins at the creation of the universe before it was even an atom and continues into infinity after the universe has experienced heat death. It has to exist in the correct location at the correct moment because the entire universe requires it. So first of all, the atoms that make up your body in the future are mostly different than the ones that make up your body now due to cellular regeneration, and second, the atoms that make up your body in the future already have somewhere to be right now.

“Human souls don’t appear to be bound by the other laws of the universe, are not made of matter or energy, and without getting into the really weird questions like ‘why are we the only machines that have them’ and ‘what is a soul in the first place,’ it seems that because the soul is not bound by the rigid structure of the universe, yours was able to move along the fourth dimension. I wonder if my future self is the one who did it.”

Yuji says, “I don’t know if this is a bad time to mention this, or if I should say anything at all, but the first time I saw you, my feeling was that I was so happy to see you again. Like we hadn’t seen each other in a really, really long time. Like maybe you don’t…maybe you don’t exist in the future.”

Gojo laughs this off. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m the strongest. There’s no one who could kill me.”

Yuji says, “Sorcerers can die from natural causes, right?”

“Sure. I’m very healthy. I almost never get sick.”

Yuji turns and says, “Diabetes?”

“Never heard of him. What’s his technique?”

“Your toes fall off.”

“Nasty. Want another cupcake?”

Yuji asks, “Can we save one for the kid?”

“Of course. The demon needs his sugar.”

Gojo convinces Yuji to keep his visions a secret going forward, because while he believes Yuji and Ryokun are somehow from the future, it would be impossible to successfully sell that story to the old men in the room. Even if he could make them believe it, out of their conservative stupidity, they’d approach this strange phenomenon with the same insight and intelligence as everything else.

Inevitably, they’d decide that if Yuji and Ryokun are trespassers from the future, the best thing they can do is eliminate them in order to maintain the status quo, although if Yuji’s visions are correct, the status quo is going to bring them to disaster.

That said, he does find Nanami after lunch because saving Nanami’s life is incredibly important to him.

Nanami has just finished a week of substitute teaching, only to hear from the rumor mill that Gojo had to take a week off because he stole Naoya Zenin’s likely marriage partner and got her pregnant. To call that kind of behavior inappropriate and ridiculous is an understatement. Nanami is an outsider and even he knows that among clans, that’s extremely unacceptable behavior. If anybody else did it, somebody would probably get killed.

The door suddenly flies open, and Gojo exclaims, “Nanamin! Did you miss me?”

“No. I have a lot of worth to catch up on since I was diverted from my standard work activities for some time due to lapse in moral judgement by one of my colleagues.”

Gojo laughs. “The rumor mill turns fast around here. You want to get a beer tonight?”

“Go home to your pregnant wife.”

“She’s staying in Kyoto with my family.”

“That’s not a problem for someone with your abilities, is it?”

Satoru asks, “Since when are you the police?”

Nanami looks up at him over his glasses and says, “You really could be setting a better example for your students.”

“I never said I was a role model.”

“You’re a teacher.”

Gojo sits in a chair across from his desk and says, “Anyway, about the vision Yuji told you about… You need to watch your back, Nanami. Almost our whole generation is gone, and we haven’t even made it to thirty. We can’t disappear. There’s a gap behind us because of those stupid old men and everything will fall on the students.”

“I don’t have any intention of being killed by some curse. However, I will be mindful.”

The conspiracy theory runs rampant in closed circles that the elders of the Jujutsu Society, starting around the time that Gojo became unmanageable, allowed students to be placed in circumstances where they might be killed if they showed signs of being a little too independent or a little too powerful.

At least from Nanami’s perspective, it seems like the elders would prefer to have a larger number of weaker sorcerers than a smaller number of stronger sorcerers, so they could be like generals of an army, making all the decisions and controlling all of the power.

The fact remained that for a number of years, every single strong student died, yet the mediocre ones fared a little better, leading to a larger field of weaker sorcerers who didn’t make trouble.

The problem with that is that there is not a number of second grade sorcerers that is enough to take out a special grade curse. It takes a monster to kill a monster.

This weird trend of powerful students dying stopped the instant that Gojo decided to become a teacher. Not one student in Tokyo has died on his watch and miraculously, Kyoto students are faring better but were being saturated in anti-Gojo sentiment.

It was almost like they’d kill the strong students to protect themselves, but now they had to keep some of them alive in order to have power that wasn’t loyal to Gojo, leading to acrimony between the two schools and increasingly violent ‘competitions.’

Nanami knew Gojo didn’t care if the students weren’t loyal to him as long as they were alive.

After finishing up with Nanami, Gojo finds Kugisaki to tell her she’s going to have a bodyguard. There is a miscommunication, and Kugisaki assumes he is African. Yuta Okkotsu probably doesn’t sound like a very African name, but Gojo decides not to correct her because he thinks it will lead to a humorous misunderstanding.

Yuji finishes his classes for the day, and goes to collect Ryokun from daycare, where he is in the middle of a nap in a room adjacent to the entrance.

When the worker lightly nudges him, Ryokun grumbles in his little toddler voice, “Begone woman, I slumber.”

“What the hell?” Yuji whispers under his breath.

This is the fourth time he’s heard Ryokun say something weird, in a different accent, while he was half-asleep. Toddlers are strange and will emulate accents they see on television or just talk crazy for no reason, but it’s still just very odd. Where did he even learn ‘begone’ and ‘slumber?’

The worker covers her mouth in an attempt not to laugh and wake the other children.

When he realizes that Yuji is there to get him, he runs to collect his art for the day, a swirl of scribbles, and his little backpack, and he meets him, his hair still messy from sleeping.

As he’s putting on his shoes, the worker takes the paper spool of golden apple stickers and tears not one but two off for Ryokun, who proudly accepts this reward.

Yuji asks, “Were you good today?”

The worker says, “Ryokun was very, very good today. Very peaceful. Very serene. He’s starting to become quite friendly with the girls. They’re really taking a liking to him because he doesn’t try to fight them. They think he’s very handsome. He’s been giving them little food nicknames, it’s very cute. Today he did puzzles, and he played pretend very nicely.”

It is news to Yuji that Ryokun’s terror has been limited to boys.

“Good job, buddy! I’m proud of you!”

“Okay.”

Ryokun clearly wants Yuji to praise him, and then when he does it, he acts like he never wanted it and it’s dumb. It reminds Yuji of a cat meowing for attention, and then when the owner reaches out, the cat turns and leaves and ignores him.

As they’re walking back, Yuji says, “I didn’t realize you were such a ladies man.”

“What’s that?”

“A man who likes to date lots of women. Has lots of girlfriends? Do you get what I’m saying? Did the boys tease you for hanging out with the girls?”

Ryokun says, “I will hit them. They know.”

His young peers have in some vague sense, came to the same understanding as the sorcerers of Alghera’s age: if Ryomen Sukuna was entertaining himself peacefully, it was best for everyone if he was simply allowed to continue without disturbance.

The toddler says, “I played king and queen with the girls. I was the king. They were mad about who got to be queen. So I said all of them could be. Kiwi says my hair is soft and she likes to touch it. I like that. And,” he holds out three fingers, “this many girls hugged me today.”

Yuji realizes that this child had a good day at daycare and didn’t punch anyone in the stomach today because he established a toddler harem and spent the day being doted upon by girls calling him King Ryokun. He feels like this is just menacing behavior of a different variety despite the fact the workers thinking it’s cute.

“Did any girls hug you today?” Ryokun asks.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is it because of your face?”

“We have the same face, dude.”

“But I’m so handsome. Everyone says so.”

Yuji feels like he’s going to be miserable when Ryokun figures out how to make longer sentences and can properly mock him, but for now, he just has these little moments, where he feels judged by questions or short statements.

When he gets Ryokun back to their room, he gives him the cupcake after they put his golden apple stickers on the project board.

“It’s good. Where did it come from?”

Ryokun is very food motivated and has a lot of curiosities about food; if he eats something he likes, he always wants to know where it came from, and he seems to retain this information better than anything else.

“Gojo’s wife made it.”

“Yuji.”

“What?”

“She probably gives him hugs.”

Since they were having a baby, Yuji assumed they’d done a lot more than hug, but that’s not the point. The point is that he’s being trolled by this little monster who discovered it was nice having a bunch of girls pay attention to him and wants to rub it in his face.

While Ryokun sits and scribbles, Yuji considers Gojo’s suggestion that somehow or another, they’re from the future and the future might suck a lot.

He wonders why they would make this journey together?

If he must have been an older adult who made the journey to become a teenager again, what life state was Ryokun in? Was he an adult in the future, but a toddler in this time? Did he know this wild little monster as an adult? Was he a pain in the ass in the future?

The idea of Ryokun being adult-sized is kind of scary, actually.

Yuji tries to indirectly poke at him and see if he has any premonitions or sentiments or anything like that. Ryokun has reliably called a number of people by their name without being told, and Yuji only knew Nanami’s name. It seems like he maybe has a better idea, but he’s also a giant baby and had a kangaroo as an imaginary friend who was actually a giraffe because he got his animals mixed up.

While they chat and Yuji tries to figure out if he can extract any information from Ryokun, the child peels the label off his white crayon, and then breaks it in half before laboring to balance the flat bottom half of the crayon so it could stand.

Yuji quickly puts the crayon away before Ryokun can try to explain the odd image in his mind, and Yuji asks, “Do you ever have dreams about anything? Not including that nightmare about your shoes trying to eat you.”

Ryokun simply moves on; he sees the image in his mind, but he doesn’t really understand it.

There is something that does matter.

“Blueberry.”

“You dream about blueberries?”

“No, Blueberry. Blueberry is a girl. The best girl ever.”

“A girl from daycare?”

“No.”

“A girl who is around here?”

“No.”

“Where do you know her from?”

“Dunno.”

“What does she look like?”

“Dunno.”

“What do you remember?”

“That I miss her.”

A tear falls on the paper he’s scribbling on, and Yuji realizes the subject of Blueberry actually makes Ryokun very sad and triggers his toddler feelings, causing him to actively choose to be in a horrible whiny mood for a while.

Yuji decides that if they are from the future, that future must have been quite sad.

Yuji puts some cartoons on, and Ryokun insists that that Yuji watch them with him, then proceeds to climb all over him to find the right position for watching and snuggling.

“You want hugs from me? I thought you had a bunch of girls for hugs.”

“I hug you. No one else will hug you. ‘cept me.”

Yuji answers, “Hey brat, do you think of me as your friend?”

“Yea. We help each other. Mostly me. I help you lots,” he sticks out his tongue.

The strange truth of the broken white crayon, including the fact that Ryokun understands that he is the one who snapped it in half, remain unknown.

Chapter Text

After having Yuji walk around Shinjuku every few days for the better part of a month, Gojo and Yuji have collected a number of clues.

It seems clear that at pivotal two distinct events happen, first an absolute bloodbath that ruins Shinjuku. Then, some time later, maybe twenty years in Gojo’s estimation, another brutal showdown.

Yuji has visions of many people dying, but he also has visions where the bodies of other people are simply caught in the frame of these visions.

Yuji has clearly seen the monster in his mind, describing her as looking like him in the face, tall, slender, with smoky purple hair and black monochrome eyes. She is naked and has a frame that is female in shape, but her body lacks features, like a doll without clothes.

They’ve codenamed her Smoke because they have no idea what her actual name is.

Smoke is either an extremely sophisticated humanoid cursed spirit, or she is a curse user.

There seems to be some upward limit on how powerful both a curse and a human being can be, with Rika being one of the strongest curses to ever be born and Gojo being one of the strongest humans to ever be born.

Smoke is a monster far beyond either of them as far is Yuji’s visions are concerned.

Yuji has seen evidence to suggest that at earlier Shinjuku, Smoke may kill around half of all known sorcerers in the Jujutsu Society in what appears to be an extremely short time period.

It is an absolute fucking wipeout event.

Blood, gore, and chaos everywhere, with most of these people either dying before they realize what has appeared before them, or sacrificing themselves trying to allow some to escape, or simply getting caught while they try to flee.

From context, it seems like the appearance of Smoke was somehow a surprise, but for some reason, basically the entire strength of the Jujutsu Society was concentrated in one place, and that fact was in and of itself confusing.

“Why were all these people in the same place at one time, if it wasn’t for her?”

Yuji says, “I don’t know.”

“Perhaps Smoke isn’t the monster they went to Shinjuku to fight. If Smoke is a cursed spirit, her birth might be tied to some other event.”

Gojo carved a secret room out of his basement, where they are compiling their clues. It’s not exactly a Batcave, which he apologizes for profusely, but he doesn’t want anyone to know what they’re doing.

Since he lives on campus, Yuji has been visiting the little housing complex there on campus, where he lives under Shoko Ieiri and next door to Nanami, who lives under Masamichi Yaga. The top units get second and third floor, and the bottom units get ground floor and basement, which is not considered favorable, but Gojo lost the top unit to Shoko years ago after a drinking game.

They hang their notes up, assembling pieces of a puzzle even though the image they create becomes increasingly grim.

One of the most terrifying facts about the two Shinjuku events is that they take place in the future but feature the same enemy, which means that after wiping out most of the Jujutsu Society, Smoke continues to live for a very long time, which suggests that those who survived were unable to defeat her.

Even in Yuji’s vision of Later Shinjuku, he hasn’t confirmed that she actually dies, only that she kills more sorcerers.

From some vantage points in his visions, Yuji can see beyond Shinjuku, and it seems all of Tokyo is just a debris field that extends forever, an indication that the devastation there happens everywhere.

Maybe it’s not just the end of the world for sorcerers, but for everyone? The whole purpose of the Jujutsu Society is to protect humans from curses and curse users, and they’re always told that if they failed in their work, everything might fall apart. Ignoring Smoke, if that many sorcerers died at once, how would they be able to do the normal work?

There are so many things that they simply can’t see, that they don’t know.

But what they do know is all kinds of bad.

Gojo finds it incredibly telling that Yuji has not seen him or Yuta at either of these events, although that’s not entirely true. There’s partial corpse called Legs on their clue board, and when adding it, he thought to himself how cruel it would be to meet this sort of end as he scribbled, ‘Who is Legs?’ on a sticky note.

There is an intense fear growing in Gojo’s mind, one that he can’t seem to shake.

What if he dies and makes the cursed transition to vengeful spirit? That really explains everything: his absence from the battlefield, the strength of the curse, the abilities Yuji saw it using…there’s no part of anything that Yuji has seen that disapproves this theory.

It shouldn’t be possible for negative sentiment to accumulate in a place that is so great that it spawns a curse that magnificently powerful, but there is an exception to this rule.

The most powerful curses known to exist were all vengeful spirits. Every last one.

Smoke looks like him, uses similar abilities, and he is nowhere to be seen.

In fact, Yuji has seen a character in his Later Shinjuku visions that definitely has Six Eyes and is already a teenager during that event, which is proof that he has been dead for a very long time when Later Shinjuku happens.

Is he the thing that destroys the world?

The truth neither of them know is that Alghera based her appearance on Gojo’s as she was being born because he was the most powerful entity that she absorbed, and that during her time, Gojo fought her for over fifteen years as a disembodied soul in order to give his surviving students a chance to defeat her.

Gojo also doesn’t know about the Culling Game or the consequences it will have; he only knows that he dies and a cursed spirit that looks like him and has his powers kills basically everyone he knows and probably a lot of people he doesn’t.

It terrifies him, really.

Even if he knows it might happen, how can he stop it?

He decides to try his luck and consult Tengen again, and surprisingly, she allows him to come and speak with her again.

Since Tengen doesn’t meddle in politics, he doesn’t think there’s any risk in telling her about Yuji, especially since Tengen already knows someone used a time manipulation technique at the time that he and Yuji met. Certainly, someone like Tengen already has her suspicions about what is going on.

Sitting on the tree roots again, he explains the situation, and Tengen becomes increasingly tense.

The fact that they don’t even know if the future sorcerers ever killed Smoke is maybe the most terrifying thing of all—the idea that basically all the sorcerers might be killed and still lose is something beyond scary.

Tengen says, “It is difficult for me to imagine the circumstances that might cause you to die in the first place. I am not aware of any sorcerers anywhere who might be able to defeat you in your current state, which is a boon for us while you are a human. As a vengeful spirit, you could certainly inflict an incalculable amount of hell upon the world.

“Even though your deductions seem correct, I believe your conclusion is wrong. A vengeful spirit contains a twisted imprint of the person it used to be. In all likelihood, if you became a vengeful spirit, you would still possess the sentiment that you would rather die than harm your students. I would assume you would eliminate the leadership of the Jujutsu Society, perhaps me, maybe your clan for refusing your humanity…but not the students.

“It seems possible that this creature is actually a curse user with transformative abilities or the ability to copy or use the techniques or appearance of others. Perhaps it is a curse that fashioned itself after you in order to torment your students.”

Gojo is relieved by Tengen’s assertion that he would not kill his students even if he did turn into a vengeful spirit. As someone with her age and experience, he decides he will trust this belief.

Tengen goes on to admit that the possibility rise of an unbeatable entity, regardless of its nature, is cause for high alarm. While Satoru could wipe out humanity at any time, Tengen points out that he continually chooses not to do that, even though many powerful sorcerers eventually succumb to their own darkness.

She doesn’t mention Suguru Geto by name, but she implies that his case isn’t isolated no matter how much the higher ups pretended it was.

“Are you certain that you do not survive in this future?”

Satoru crosses his arms and leans against a big tree root. “Yuji has seen some kid with Six Eyes in his vision. A little mini-me. White hair, glowing blue eyes, the whole deal. Even had a black blindfold.”

“Certainly, if there is another Six Eyes user, the requirement is that you would have to die before that person was born. Six Eyes is a curious gift, it’s odd that it would appear in the world consecutively. You can think of it as a balancing tool, something fate will throw on the scales when an imbalance or threat emerges. If you perished and another one like you was born, we could assume only one of two things must be true.”

Gojo holds out his fingers. “First, there were two massive events in the world back to back. Second, I fail, die, and my burden passes on to someone else.”

Tengen nods. “That would be my belief.”

Gojo’s fear had been that he would die and become a vengeful spirit and kill everyone including his dear students, but Tengen believes the threat may be something they don’t yet understand and can’t predict based on their current knowledge.

Yuji is meanwhile having a very normal day.

At least, it’s normal for a sorcery student.

After his daily meeting with Gojo, he goes to class, works out, and spars with Megumi and Nobara, which is hard for him at times because he has now seen both of them die.

At around two in the afternoon, Masamichi Yaga, who instructs them on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, decides to let them go early because they were out late on a mission the night before.

 Yuji returns to his dorm room to decompress a little before he needs to retrieve his lovable little demon from daycare. When he flops down on the bottom bunk, he subconsciously reaches with one arm to retrieve a hard plastic toy car out from under him where it presses into his back and scrolls through his phone for a few minutes.

When he idly scrolls through his contacts, he sees Yuko Ozawa’s name and feels a compulsion he cannot explain to hear her voice again. It’s almost involuntary, how he clicks that call button and waits.

Yuko is in class, so she doesn’t answer.

Yuji thinks about her.

Really thinks about her.

Her voice, her smile, all the little things he likes about her.

His body reminds him that he is fifteen, and it’s incredibly rare for him to have any privacy at all to do normal teenager things. So he has a rare moment of indulgence to himself, and after he cleans up, wonders why she’s on his mind.

Yuji goes to retrieve Ryokun from daycare and discovers that no, today is not a Golden Apple Day. Ryokun jumped another toddler and hit him, and then laughed at him for crying.

Another apology, another day spent wondering what is wrong with this wild little boy.

As they’re leaving, a girl with auburn hair and freckles runs and gives Ryokun a hug.

“You’re my hero!” she calls.

“Okay,” Ryokun answers.

“Byebye, Ryokun!”

“Bye, Poppy.”

Poppy is one of Ryokun’s ‘queens,’ his little social circle that just consists of him and five girls. She received her nickname, Poppy,’ because her freckles remind Ryokun of the poppy seeds in lemon poppy muffins, which are his favorite.

Yuji knows all about Poppy because Poppy’s mom adores Ryokun. There was a mean kid that was bullying Poppy for her freckles, calling her Pochita the Dog, but Ryokun had a pure soul in the sense that he just thought her little freckles were neat. It never occurred to him to make fun of her for them.

Ryokun has discovered a fun loophole in the laws of polite society, where he is forbidden to initiate violence, unprovoked. If he hits someone for no reason, he will face serious consequences. But if he hits someone who is being bad to someone else, the consequences are significantly less serious. So he waits for the other kids to be bad, and then hits them.

Truly, a hero for the people.

The little fraud walks with his juice box, and asks, “So did any girls hug you today?”

“No.”

“Lame.”

“Where did you learn to say that?”

“Dunno.”

His phone rings, and he quickly answers it because it’s Yuko Ozawa.

“Yuko! I mean…Ozawa! Hi! Hi…Like, hi. It’s been a really long time, and I was just thinking I wanted to hear your voice. Is that weird? I’m going to stop talking now.”

Yuko is so happy to hear from Yuji that she blushes as she makes her way to the station to go home. She’s had the worst month, with her father abruptly getting transferred to Tokyo. Just when she was getting used to high school, she was starting over, in a new city.

She hadn’t had the nerve to call him after junior high graduation, even though they exchanged numbers once while they were working on a school project. At times, she thought that he’d probably forgotten about her by then.

Some part of her knew he’d be so popular in high school, favored by girls and popular with everyone, because that was just how it was.                            

“Itadori, it’s been a while. I’ve been thinking about you too lately. My family recently moved to Tokyo, so it’s been kind of hectic for me. How have you been?”

“You’re in Tokyo? I live in Tokyo! Can we meet?”

“Of course! I’d love to catch up.”

“How about right now?”

Yuji very clearly understands he is acting like a madman, but hearing this girl’s voice only urges him on, like his soul is desperate to be near her. It doesn’t make sense; he doesn’t comprehend what is happening to him. But every unexplained feeling he’s had up to this point has only been bad and this one is very good.

And then, he remembers. “Oops, I forgot I have my little brother with me.”

“I have three little brothers. I totally understand. You can bring him.”

They make plans to meet at a park near her family’s new home, since Yuji doesn’t want her to travel far in case it’s dark when she’s making her way home.

Yuji lectures Ryokun thoroughly, and makes sure he understands that he better stick close since they’re going to be getting off at Shibuya Station, and on a Friday evening, that meant there were going to be so many people. It was perhaps foolish to take a small child through that crowd, but he had faith in Ryokun. He wasn’t stupid; he was just a pain in the ass.

It’s just that he’s so excited to see her again?

She wants to see him.

He wants to see her.

Ryokun is interested in going on an adventure.

None of the involved parties know that it is a mistake for Yuji to get off the train at Shibuya Station, because grim memories have been waiting for him there since he came to this time.

They also don’t know that Kenjaku has figured out that the thing that doesn’t belong in this story is the toddler. There’s no way he is actually Yuji’s brother, because while Kenjaku cannot remember why he made Yuji, he is sure that he terminated his parents. There is no brother. And a basic investigation proved that there was no proof he even existed until the night of the Forgetting.

Kenjaku doesn’t believe he is an ordinary child, despite spies seeing him doing mostly normal things while he is at daycare. Eerily, no matter how far they watch him from, every now and then, he’ll turn from what he is doing and stare directly at his stalkers.

The sorcerer believes that if he gets his hands on this kid, that something will happen. Maybe it will be bad, maybe it will be good, but he thinks there is a chance that he can regain his memories.

Standing before his board of clues, he wonders if anyone is gathering clues about him?

A noise catches his attention, and he walks past Tore Reksten’s room in the cottage he uses as his main safehouse, where Reksten lays in bed, being cared for by a couple of Geto’s cult members. Over time, he seems to have gained some minimal human understanding that they are caring for him, but that is only because Kenjaku can’t have those limbs atrophied or covered in bed sores.

Reksten’s life is one of misery; he receives meals through a feeding tube, and while he does awaken most of the time, has lost his intelligent mind, making guttural, animalistic noises from time, soiling himself, unable to do anything or think anything.

It’s a bit ridiculous because his technique could have made him an absolutely generational talent. The only thing he would have needed to do to have his way in the world is the same thing Kenjaku has to do: find a way to do what he wanted to do without being killed by Satoru Gojo.

Kenjaku had not contained the famed sorcerer yet, and feared that if he took too many risks, he would be forced to drink from the same cup as Tore.

“You should have stayed out of Japan, my friend. For in this land, gods walk among humans, who must accept our passions, our plans, our wrath…you could have ascended to become one of us, but you made such a foolish choice. Well, I suppose it seems foolish because you were caught. If you’d gotten away with it, you would have been considered a genius. That’s how it is. You’re a genius if it works and an imbecile if it doesn’t.”

There are zero signs that Reksten understands Japanese, or any language at all, but Kenjaku doesn’t really talk so that others can hear him in the first place.

In the weeks since he came to possess this stunning specimen of a vegetable, Kenjaku has come to strongly suspect that the incident caused Gojo to wake up one day and hunt this man down without any possibility for mercy is that the siblings ran their scam on someone in the Gojo clan, someone close to Gojo, or maybe even Gojo himself—wouldn’t that be something?

The fact Kenjaku cannot find Ingrid Reksten anywhere really only reinforces the belief that woman might be incubating a kid with a technique worth taking, and if he could easily access her, it would be such quick profit for little effort. It’s easier to take candy from a baby than a special grade sorcerer, after all.

Kenjaku suspects she might be at the Gojo clan estate, but he can’t assault a location like that until Gojo himself is contained.  

What an exciting time to be alive!

He receives a text that Yuji is taking Ryo Itadori somewhere alone, somewhere away from the campus.

Unaware of the peril ahead, Ryokun gets bored with walking after a few minutes and Yuji carries him piggyback to the station. Resting his chin on Yuji’s shoulder, he tells Yuji about his imaginary friend, a penguin name Choco-Choco.

Yuji wonders how lonely he would be without the constant attention from Ryokun. The longer they spend together, the more he feels glad he’s there. As someone who grew up without siblings or cousins or even parents, and a grandfather who really wasn’t great, sometimes Ryokun seems like an unexpected blessing.

“There’s going to be lots of people here, so don’t let go no matter what, okay?”

He feels Ryokun’s hands dig into his shirt.

As soon as Yuji steps off the train platform, he feels a kind of dread that he cannot even explain, seeing disorganized flashes of the platform, lit by fluorescent lights and covered in indescribable piles of…people, and later, in darkness, where those piles have mummified at some point in the future.

It makes him feel a little sick, and he dashes to the bathroom, where he has visions about almost being beaten to death during a torrential downpour of toilet water.

When he runs out of the bathroom, he only has more flashes.

He is hyperventilating, bumping through a sea of people with a small child holding onto him for dear life, seeing some other horrible thing every time he blinks his eyes.

He suddenly feels a cheek pressed against his, and hears Ryokun ask, “Are you okay, big bro?”

He has a moment of clarity and decides the best thing he can do is leave the station and go outside, only to unknowingly walk into the hallway where Nanami and Kugisaki were killed in his first visions.

Just making it to the street is an effort, and his trauma goes unnoticed in a wave of people that continually washes him away from the station.

Since he’s been to Shinjuku a number of times, he tolerates his strange flashes of the future a little better, but it’s still incredibly intense and he is disoriented.

Yuji manages to make it to the park where they will meet, with Ryokun occasionally patting him on the head and telling him that he’s okay because that’s what Yuji does for him when he has a little moment.

Just a little comfort through memories of his Shibuya trauma, by the largest cause of his Shibuya trauma.

When he sees Yuko Ozawa, he runs like a man possessed, almost gets hit by a bus, and then trips on a curb, sending Ryokun flying like a person flying forward.

Ryokun is a very durable little tot, so he mostly just rolls across the grass at the park, but he is annoyed because crossing the street is a frequent thing that they talk about. The rules for crossing the street are to only cross at the right place, when the light is on, and always look.

As he dusts grass off himself he yells, “Did you look both ways?!”

Toddler achievement: Sarcasm.

“Sorry about that, little buddy. Are you okay?”

“No.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Yuko runs over, asking, “Oh my goodness, are you two okay?”

Yuji forgets about his conversation with the perturbed boy and has a cascade of brief visions, smiles, embraces, kisses, a baby, another baby. When he realizes that the eagerness that he feels is his future self trying to find his wife and the mother of his children again…

When he pulls her into an embrace, she simply melts into it, like she is suddenly a character in a romance manga. It wasn’t like she hadn’t spent three years since they started junior high together fantasizing about this sort of thing. She thought during most of that time that she was invisible to him, because she was overweight and not a cute girl at all, until one day when she overheard him say that if he had to pick a girl, it would be her.

Yuji was not unlike Ryokun in his consideration of other people; in the same way that Ryokun never thought about disliking the girl over her freckles because they made her cute, Yuji saw all kinds of things he liked in Yuko, and if he’d really been asked, he thought she was cute when she was short and soft too.

He wants to hold her forever, and Yuko just eats it up, because how romantic was this? That he lost himself when he saw her, and missed her so much? How many silly fantasies had she had?

At some point, Yuji realizes he is acting a bit forward and releases her, and she stares up at him, starry-eyed, he says, “I really missed you, that’s all.”

“I missed you too. It’s been a long time.”

They are interrupted by a little voice that’s actually quite jealous that someone else is hugging Yuji. “Excuse me!”

Yuji looks down at Ryokun. “What is it?”

“We almost got hit by the bus!”

“Sorry about that.”

Ryokun saw a bird get hit by a car and therefore does not think this casual apology is sufficient. He doesn’t exactly understand the state of the bird after it landed on the sidewalk, but it was no longer-bird shaped and so Ryokun assumes that being hit by a bus would make him no longer boy-shaped and he did not want that.

He is about to argue when Yuji points. “Look, ducks!”

“Ducks?!”

His attention span is instantly reset, and he runs to see about the ducks instead of pestering Yuji.

Yuji sits on a bench with Yuko, and they talk about everything that’s happened since they left junior high, although he leaves out all the weird stuff about fighting monsters and having superpowers. It’s like they’ve known each other for a hundred years, and he wants to stay there forever.

While he doesn’t know everything that happened in the future, he is sure that he lost his family somehow or another, and so, in a way, he’s been given a second chance.

A second chance to fall in love, share his life with this girl, have a family, build a world where they can survive and live safely together…

It’s a moment where he feels fifteen and at the same time, not fifteen, because fifteen-year-olds aren’t planning out to marry and have babies. Except Yuko definitely is because Yuji seeking her out and passionately embracing her just threw gasoline on every girlish fantasy that she has ever had about him.

While Ryokun tells some ducks about his day, and they quack and listen to him like they really understand.

He wonders if he’ll get in trouble if he goes in the pond, like just a little, but water is death since he doesn’t know how to swim.

“Hey there, little boy. Do you want to pet my dog?” a woman asks, attempting to place herself between Ryukun and Yuji under the guise of showing the boy the dog.

When Ryokun thinks of dogs, he thinks of Megumi’s demon dogs, and YES, he absolutely wants to pet a dog. He wants to pet all the animals, and to be friends with all the animals.

But when he turns, he sees a bug-eyed, flat-faced little thing with its tongue hanging out, huffing for air.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a dog.”

“No.”

“It’s called a pug, it’s a special kind of dog.”

“Did something bad happen to him?”

The toddler argues with his would-be kidnapper about whether a pug is actually a dog, because he is convinced it is not.

Ryokun decides this woman is stupid, because clearly, this is not the same manner of creature as Megumi’s demon dogs, or Mr. Nanami’s big fluffy dog, or the dogs on tv or in books.

“Do you want to come with me to my car? I have puppies? Baby dogs?”

“Do they look like that?”

The woman joined Star Religious Group, saw it through to its success, converted to Suguru Geto’s New World Vision, and remained loyal. She has suffered countless indignities and at age forty-two, has spent her best years pursuing dreams that perhaps no one would understand.

But possibly no task she’s ever been given is as humiliating as having some child speak of her beloved dog in this manner.

She sighs. “What if I told you I had fluffy little kittens in my car?”

“Why would you put animals in your car?”

She starts to explain herself, and he does to her what he does to Yuji; he asks the question and then he walks off and goes to do something else, signaling that he is finished with the conversation.

“Listen, Ryo Itadori. If you don’t come with us, I’ll hurt your big brother.”

“But Yuji can beat up an old lady.”

With a smile, she asks, “I have candy in my car.”

Ryokun doesn’t really feel like he’s in any sort of danger, and to Yuji, a lady is showing her dog to Ryokun. Nothing looks out of the ordinary, but Ryokun does not believe this woman’s claims that she has, in her car, lots of puppies and kittens and candy.

The woman is not a professional kidnapper and has failed to persuade even a toddler. All she got for her troubles were insults for her and her precious pup.

The probability that she could grab the kid and get away with him on foot is laughable; according ‘Master Geto,’ Yuji Itadori has extraordinary athletic capabilities. She is a forty-something-year-old woman holding a ten-year-old pug.

Plan B it is.

Then the toddler turns his attention back to the ducks, which, like the woman, initially seemed nice but are not very nice at all. Ducks are, actually, jerks. He plans on telling everyone that he knows about this information.

A cursed spirit suddenly dives down from high above the clouds. Like a huge feathered dragon, it descends with open talons.

Ryokun is a baby sorcerer, so he sees it just fine.

“YUUUUUUUJI!”

Like any parental guardian, Yuji knows the tone of yelling his child uses when he believes he is in mortal danger. Perhaps it is his shadow, perhaps it is the idea that something may lurk under the bed, perhaps it is an unsliced cherry tomato on his plate.

PERHAPS IT IS A MONSTER DESCENDING FROM THE HEAVENS TO EAT HIM.

Yuji is there in an instant, snatching him off the ground to shield him.

Yoyogi Park starts to fill with cursed spirits, a gift from Kenjaku, and Yuji doesn’t know if he should fight? Isn’t that what sorcerers do? If he just uses his technique on ‘gut instinct,’ maybe it would work, but what he can actually do isn’t much and trust on a miracle is too dangerous.

Yuko is here, and Ryokun is here.

So he decides to flee.

Yuko is terrified, because she can evidently see cursed spirits which Yuji did not know, and they’re surrounded, so he throws her over his shoulder so that he has her over his shoulder and Ryokun under his arm, and he runs, kicking curses out of the way as he attempts to escape.

This is actually also very scary for him too, because he’d seen a few little curses, but seeing an entire swarm and having that swarm chase him while carrying the two most precious creatures living on earth is stressful.

There are hundreds of people fleeing from the area because while none or nearly none of them could see the curses, they could hear them, see the way the big one’s feet tore up the grass and even the asphalt as he chased, and he was definitely chasing Yuji.

Cursed spirits are all over one of the busiest places in Japan, surely help will come.

Then he starts remembering the flashes he had in the station, and incorrectly begins to fear that this event is part of that, and that when help comes, it’ll be death and gore and blood and fire.

Yuji’s ill-conceived fears take root and spread through his body as he slides around a corner and finds the huge white nature spirit, the one that Gojo sketched from his battle in Hamamatsu.

Is this his inescapable fate? To be cornered by monsters and to lose the things that matter to him?

As he tries to figure out what his next move will be with two seconds to spare, suddenly he is on a rooftop, and for a tenth of a second Yuko and Ryokun fall, only to be caught by the arms of a very large man with a top knot.

He throws, yes throws, Ryokun and Yuko up, trusting Yuji to catch them.

Among the complex variables that no one had time to consider is the fact that Aoi Todo has traveled to Shibuya in order to shake a certain celebrity’s hand, and this time the unlucky soul he has talked into making the journey with him is Noritoshi Kamo, who arrives on the rooftop, bow in hand.

“Sorcerers?” Yuji asks.

Noritoshi looks down at him. “We are third year students at Kyoto. Are you?”

“I’m a first year at Tokyo. This is my friend Ozawa. My little brother, Ryokun.”

“Stay up here if you’re a first year. That big white curse is dangerous,” he instructs, but Yuji has already jumped, leaving Yuko and Ryokun on the roof behind a ledge.

Ryokun’s mental state allows him to hold onto Yuko for dear life and scream Yuji’s name at her chest. Nothing else.

“Listen, you have to stop screaming. If you don’t scream, they won’t look at us. They are distracted right now. Okay? Please…” Yuko says.

Kamo looks down at her, asking a certain question without asking, and she says, “My parents are windows.”

This explains why she knows to keep the child quiet and out of line of sight for the curses, and why she’s terrified they are there, but not that they exist. The kind of horror people experience the first time they see them is usually distinctly different.

It’s hard for anyone to tell how or why any of this started, but Kamo and Todo both feel it has a very Night Parade feel about it, seeing dozens of curses act in coordination with one another, except the most powerful one, who seems to move freely.

The situation is rough all around, since it’s in public, happening in late afternoon, involves a very powerful curse that could clearly do the numbers if it wanted to. Even with Todo, Kamo knows they’re underpowered even though the first year is a surprisingly talented brawler like Todo is.

Luckily, they’re in Tokyo, and that means they don’t have to win.

They only have to hold off the curses long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Despite the fact that Kamo is frequently subjected to anti-Gojo rhetoric where his politics and character are questioned, no one can argue with the fact that there’s no one better to show up in a situation like this, and unless he was off somewhere on a trip, he was going to come.

As he takes aim to fire another shot into the swarm of curses, Kamo is suddenly frozen on the spot.

While he can’t even turn to see the icy assassin that has successfully disabled him, Yuko can and sees a white-haired sorcerer with red blotches in her hair.

Yuko isn’t a fighter, but she tries while still holding Ryokun with her right arm and ends up with a spike of ice stuck through her left hand.

Uraume rips Ryokun off despite how hard he is clenching her school blazer.

He fights her like she’s picked up a feral cat, biting, scratching, kicking, and she accidentally drops him quite hard on the roof, where he lands face first, busting his lip.

When he looks up at her, crying, he stops for a minute and then sobs, “Uraume?”

Uraume cannot remember why or how or any of the details, but when Ryokun says her name, she simply knows that he is the reason that she came to this era. He is the reason she has been doing what Kenjaku says. So she can find him again. He is her master, and the most sincere desire of her heart is to serve him.

Is he supposed to be a tiny child? She can’t remember.

Her master is crying because of this stupid scheme. Kenjaku was going to kidnap him and probably do very bad things to him. Now, he was hurt and he was crying, and it was partly her fault.

She bows, placing her head on the roof. “Young master, please forgive me! I acted out of ignorance. Tell me what you wish, and I will do it.”

The only word Ryokun heard was wish, and, wiping blood on his forearm, he cries, “I wanna go home with Yuji!”

“Then so you shall, young master.”

After unfreezing Noritoshi Kamo, Uraume joins the fight in earnest, killing the curses Kenjaku unleashed and even assisting the student sorcerers in their battle against Hanami who Uraume called by name when ordering her to leave the battlefield.

There was a clear sense of betrayal, but the attack abruptly ended once it went past five minutes, and the curses retreated before reinforcements could arrive.

After hesitating, Uraume also fled, although in a completely different direction.

When Gojo arrived, he was treated to one of the most peculiar stories he’d ever heard in his life. There was no part of what happened that seemed normal, beginning to end.

Yuji got some sort of sentiment about a girl who was apparently his wife in the future, who comes from a family of windows, sighted people with no cursed energy. They were crushing so hard they couldn’t wait to see each other, so they made a date after school and Yuji just brought Ryokun along.

Yuji then proceeded to have graphic, violent visions of some terrible incident at Shibuya, the event where Nanami and Kugisaki are evidently killed, and absolutely undeterred by this, he still went to see the wifey.

They were attacked by curses, and whatever was going to happen, almost happened. It was only stopped because the third years from Kyoto happened to be right there due to Todo’s very weird and active fantasy life.

Then the ice user got an opening to take Ryokun, which might have been the purpose of all of this, but instead she apologized and started taking orders from him like he was her boss?

One of the most spectacular facts about all of this is that Yuji and Yuko didn’t plan any of this. It literally just happened, accidentally. That makes the attack quite special as the person who planned it must have done so with little notice.

By the time he arrived, Yuji had already healed Yuko’s hand with RCT, which was a big, big no-no. Cursed energy was poisonous to people who weren’t sorcerers, so it wasn’t like someone with RCT could just walk around healing people. He knows she’ll be sick in a few hours, so he sends her with Ryokun back to the campus so Shoko can look after them.

Gojo doesn’t even know where to begin with all of this. It’s clear someone wanted Ryokun, and they were waiting for an opportunity to grab him. His normal daily routine is just daycare and home, and the daycare is so close to the campus that it was in the five block radius outside the property line that served as the outermost detection layer of Tengen’s barriers.

One couldn’t pull something like that off close to the campus without expecting an all-out war.

The scene is a mess in terms of containment, and the Jujutsu Society quickly decides to go with the excuse that a truck carrying chemicals crashed and emitted gases that cause hallucinations. Since most people couldn’t see the curses, this was easy for them to accept since hearing a sound and not seeing the thing that caused it obviously doesn’t make sense. The people who can see curses will already know it’s a coverup and keep their mouths shut anyway.

Why would someone target Ryokun?

It wasn’t possible to extract useful information from him. Ryokun would not provide accurate information if asked what he ate for breakfast at 11 am. He wasn’t a clan baby that could be used for hostage negotiations of some sort. Yuji doesn’t have any influence in the sorcery world at the moment.

He considers that maybe Tore Reksten had somehow recovered from achieving enlightenment, had taken control of this group he fought before, and that he might want to steal Ryokun’s technique because it had special grade potential.

Gojo feels like that idea has to be false because he’s just having a day of bad ideas.

Kamo and Todo being literally right there was such a lucky break, but there had still been a few civilian casualties caused by the curses crashing through nearby buildings after they left the part. Even though the students showed up and did all the right things, he makes a point to tell them they did well because it’s always sad when a sorcerer does their best and innocent people still die.

They’re sitting in a café the Jujutsu Society is using to coordinate cleanup in the evacuated blocks of the nearby area, and when he attempts to encourage them, he finds he is met with steel eyes and set jaws.

Gojo thinks they’re upset about the casualties, but Kamo’s pursed lips finally part and he says, “There was something familiar about the cursed spirits used in the attack today. The attack was very similar to the Night Parade.”

“That’s interesting.”

Kamo says, “The Night Parade, which was caused by someone you had a personal connection to, who you said you killed, but then…nobody saw the body, right?”

The real question was whether he actually let Suguru Geto go and lie about killing him, because if he did, this attack certainly seemed like it had been caused by him.

It is a hurtful line of inquiry, and it does make him feel a little betrayed, but he also doesn’t blame them for asking. First of all, they are being influenced against him on a daily basis, and secondly, this isn’t the first time this particular theory has been spoken into the air that he has to breathe.

Kamo says, “As heir to the Kamo clan, I wish to see proof. It’s not personal.”

“If it wasn’t personal, you wouldn’t have that intense look in your narrow little eyes,” the teacher answers, before giving them a bit of a forced smile, “but we’re going to be better than our elders and hold each other accountable, and sometimes that means asking difficult questions. I would rather you ask than to hold it inside, doubting me as your ally, or fearing I might use my strength against you.”

Gojo gives them each a firm pat on my shoulder. “Because of Geto’s unusual body, I didn’t want the Elders to have it because I knew they’d probably do experiments on it, so I removed Geto’s heart and gave it to them. I am certain they verified with residue and DNA matching, and that they still have it. Noritoshi, your father is one of the Elders, so I am certain he can give you two access. Keep asking questions. It’s the thing they hate most.”

Every word came straight from his heart, because he didn’t want his students to think he was beyond reproach, or that any of them should be when they got older. The whole point of him trying to change the system from the inside instead of ripping it to shreds—a thing that would be much easier for him—was so they could learn a better way.

The fact remained that both of them fought against Geto’s curse hordes, and even though they were wrong to accuse Geto, there was something significant about both of them firmly agreeing that their experience was similar to that.

Gojo didn’t know what that significance was, but he knew that in the end, they’d look back on it as a clue.

While Gojo works on the joint investigation, coverup, cleanup team, Yuji finishes his interviews with the Jujutsu Society investigators and is driven back to the campus, where Yuko is resting in the infirmary. Shoko reports that Her hand is turning into a huge bruise around where he ‘healed,’ her, and says she’ll probably be sick for a few days, but it would take two months for stab through the hand to recover naturally.

Shoko says, “As for the kid, he just had a few cuts and scrapes. He’s not talking and seems to be a little bit shellshocked right now. For this kind of experience, that’s probably as well as you could hope. He’s naturally tough, so I’m sure he’ll be back to terrorizing everyone soon.”

When Yuji continues on to the room where they’re resting, Ryokun is still clinging to Yuko for dear life, while she holds him, humming softly in his ear.

Yuji pulls a chair up to the edge of the bed and takes his brat from her.

“Sorry about everything. All of this is my fault. If I hadn’t called you, none of this would have happened.”

Yuko says, “So was that a date or what?”

“That’s what you want to know?”

“I mean, we could just not talk about the rest. As far as I’m concerned, my day ended while we were sitting on that bench, and I was blushing because our pinkies were touching. I was going to write about it in my diary, and I think I’m still going to. I’ll just leave out the whole ‘chased by curses’ part. And apparently your little brother has a servant?”

“I have no idea what’s going on in my life. I had no idea your family knew about sorcery. windows are people who can see curses, but they can’t use sorcery so they just report stuff, right?”

Yuko nods. “Let’s say you have a sorcery clan. There’s like one branch that has all the techniques and so the further and further away you get from that branch, the less cursed energy you have and the lower chance you have to receive a technique. Most windows are people that fell off sorcery trees so long ago many don’t even know which family they’re related to. Eventually, even being sighted disappears.”

He answers, “I just found out cursed spirits exist in June. Now I’m a sorcerer. It’s been kind of crazy for me. There’s a lot going on in my world right now. And I’ve got this guy to take care of on top of it, but he’s good company.”

Yuko asks, “Do you have any other family?”

“No. Just Ryokun.”

“So tell me how you’re going to go out and fight every night and see all the scary awful things, and go through all the horrible things sorcerers go through, and you’re going to take care of everyone…when there’s nobody taking care of you? Maybe I’m being too bold. It might be the meds.”

Yuji answers, “Oh for sure. Shoko is not a real doctor and if you get hurt, she will send you straight to the moon so that you suffer as little as possible while you’re here.”

Yuji is torn between the ideas that he should leave her alone and let her live a normal life in the normal people world doing normal things. She’ll probably live to be old that way, and have a family with someone else who doesn’t hunt monsters for a living.

OR

He can get even stronger than he was in whatever future where this all went so wrong, and keep his wife and family with him. Holding a toddler and rubbing his back to soothe him while they talk is so familiar to him that he feels like he is somehow more himself in this moment when they are sort of family-shaped.

Man, woman, baby.

Yuko was sweet to Ryokun too, and even tried to protect him.

Yuji eventually takes Ryokun back to their room, and after trying to get him to eat, just helps him get a hot bath and lays down with him. He’s so quiet, but quite awake. He just wants to snuggle with his big bro and is stuffy orange cat toy.

In the morning, Ryokun seems miraculously better, hungry, quite vibrant.

“You doing better, buddy?” Yuji asks.

“Mhmm. I had a dream.”

“Was it good?”

He nodded. “In my dream, a giant said if I’m scared again, he would help me.”

“A giant, huh?”

“He was really big! And he had four arms.”

Chapter Text

A few days later, Yuji and Ryokun follow Gojo down an ancient stone path at his clan’s estate, through the most beautiful garden he’s ever seen in his life. Who knew such a place was even real?

“How long as your family lived here?”

“Fifteen centuries, give or take. One of the reasons Kyoto was actually built is because Japan was because we were here, so it was safe from more dangerous curses. Back in the day before cars and trains and communication, dangerous curses were able to do a lot more damage before they were stopped. Adding to that was the fact that sorcerers as a whole didn’t really accept the idea that they were there to protect humanity until later than that. All of the oldest successful Japanese towns were anchored to sorcery clans.”

Ryokun lets out a very loud, “Stop! Fishes.”

He makes his way to a koi pond off the path, and points.

Some of the koi are quite huge, and Ryokun kneels on a stone at the edge and looks down at them as they swim over to see him even while he has come to see them.

“You want to give them a little snack?” Gojo asks.

“Yea!”

Gojo opens a little wooden bin by the pond and brings Ryokun a little scoop of food.

Interacting with animals is a high form of entertainment for a child this age, and Gojo is patient while Ryokun interacts with and makes his observations about the fish. He puts his hand in the water and feels the odd, tickly sensation of the koi testing to see if his hand was food, which causes him to giggle.

Moments like these reinforce the belief that Ryokun is definitely, authentically, just a little kid. That makes it so much worse that he was in so much danger and had been so thoroughly frightened by the attack. Even though he’s doing well, Satoru and Yuji both think a little change of scenery might help a little.

They continue on to the master’s wing of the big residence, where they are greeted by Gojo’s wife, Chiyo, who Gojo himself has not seen since the day they got their marriage certificate two months prior.

He usually returned home on his days off prior to that, but he’s been busy, and he’s been avoiding his home, because that is where his wife lives. Perfectly normal stuff, of course.

Chiyo is wearing a yukata with a fake baby belly underneath, because she is supposed to be twenty-one weeks pregnant. She even walks like she’s pregnant? Gojo finds it kind of hilarious, but then again, if her mannerisms didn’t change, people would catch on.

She serves them a big, delicious home-cooked meal.

With their fish dish, Chiyo served chilled sake to her husband, and then chilled apple cider to the boys and herself. Ryokun was very official about how he consumed what he thought was a grownup drink, and so he drinks his little cup of cider and tells them about The Little Mermaid, which he watched twice on the trip over.

This trip was Chiyo’s idea, to let her keep Ryokun for a week or so while because he was obviously a top target for somebody. It was a peaceful environment, and she promised to take good care of him. It was better than keeping him under lock and key at the dorm.

Ryokun wasn’t happy about the idea of being separated from Yuji, but they really needed to be able to move freely, and Ryokun both needed some time to recover.

Letting him run around the gardens and play with the little cousins was probably going to be good for him.

Ryokun is particular about people, so Yuji is worried that he’ll be disagreeable, but Chiyo is a really good cook, and they haven’t gotten to eat a lot of home-cooked meals together. Ryokun is food-motivated, so people who give him food he likes have a certain power over him.

After the meal, Gojo is surprised to see his living room has been arranged around a giant concert piano, although that explains a charge that he saw on one of his credit cards.

“Can you play?” he asks.

Yuji is kind of surprised by this question, both that Gojo didn’t know there was a piano in his house, and that he doesn’t know whether his wife knows how to play an instrument.

Chiyo gives him a rather tight, ‘why are you blowing our cover’ kind of smile and says, “It’s just for decoration.”

Ryokun touches the keys, and they make noise, and this is fascinating and wonderful to him. He experiences a sense of awe at the endless potential of this enormous, glorious noise-making machine.

Yuji says, “Please be careful.”

Chiyo answers, “It’s okay. There’s probably not anything he could actually do to damage it, and even if he did, Satoru will buy me a new one, right?”

“It’s an expensive decoration, but sure. Anything for my wife.”

Chiyo sits next to Ryokun and reaches out and plays with one hand the first notes of ‘Under the Sea’ from The Little Mermaid, and Ryokun looks at her as if she has just performed a magical spell before his very eyes.

“Want to see some real sorcery?” she asks.

Ryokun is treated to a rendition of the song by a master pianist on a grand piano that makes the walls and floor vibrate as the music fills the room. She knows the words, she can sing, she is good at singing.

He is at a loss—should he dance, should he sing, should he sit hypnotized by the way her fingers move so quickly and know exactly where to go to make the sounds?

She plays it for him, and he asks again, and she plays it again, and again a third time.

Then he whispers, “Do you know about ‘Hakuna Matata?’”

“Let me see…I think,” she says, pretending to remember if she knows it, before starting to play the melody, “it means no worries!”

Satoru and Yuji are sitting on the sofa watching, and Gojo leans over and says, “From this moment on, nothing we can ever do will impress him.”

Yuji asks, “No kidding. How did you not know your wife plays the piano?”

“I don’t know my wife. It’s a secret,” he whispers in reply.

It’s quite an answer.

Listening to live music is always a treat, even if it’s just Disney music and kids songs, but she knows all the songs he knows and will perform them like they are monumental pieces of historic music meant to be played in a grand concert hall.

Gojo says, “You even make ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ fancy, huh?”

She plays like she’s singing a line in the song, “This arrangement was composed by Mozart, and is quite famous. Everyone knows it.”

“Are you mad I didn’t know you played?”

She sings each line and plays as she replies, “I wanted to be a professional musician and can play seven different instruments and compose music, but my family made me get married instead and now I am married to someone who doesn’t know I even like music.

“I am Satoru Gojo, and there’s a piano in my house.

“I wonder why.

“Maybe it is a decoration!

“What if my wife likes music?

“How do I know if my wife likes music?”

Yuji can sense the atmosphere is a little tense, so he says, “Hey, little bro, let’s go outside and look around the garden.”

“I want to hear Mr. Gojo get yelled at,” the boy answers.

Yuji is actually kind of impressed that Ryokun was able to read enough cues and understood what was going on with the adults.

“Let’s go.”

Yuji takes him out, and they explore. There’s plenty to look at, and the gardens are bursting with all kinds of plants and animals. Lily pads and koi fish, local and exotic plants, frogs, a rabbit peeking at them, a calico cat with a tag calling her the ‘Kazu, Chief Mouser,’ bugs, birds, and since it’s late summer, lots of fruit trees and flowers everywhere.

In ancient times, really only the richest people got to live in places like this, and in modern times, usually not even them.

There’s a giant gingko tree on the property that has warning signs, seal tape, and red rope in an octagonal area around it with a short little wall with slippery sides that a child could not crawl over. According to a sign the tree is a special grade cursed ‘hazard.’

Yuji has a lot of questions about this.

Then again, he’s never been in such a lavish private garden before, maybe they all have an evil tree. That sounds like something ancient rich people would do, since they couldn’t build rockets and go to space yet.

When they’re standing in front of the tree, he sees a flash of this place, a vision of a dark future.

It’s totally destroyed.

The tree has fallen and burned, the buildings are all collapsed, it’s almost unrecognizable outside of the tree. There are also giant tree roots everywhere which seems kind of weird.

Yuji is unaware, but this is a vision of a day in the other timeline when he travelled to the Gojo estate because Sukuna told him that Alghera’s strange protective ability might be beatable by someone using Limitless.

Quickly pushing it out of his mind, he catches up to Ryokun. There’s an area of the garden that has a little playground, and even a complex of tree houses.

There are a few kids playing, all older, all with white hair.

When they see Ryokun, they stare, and Yuji actually kind of thinks this is weirdly nightmarish, having all these little pale white-haireds with jewel-toned eyes glare at them. Yuji had no idea they all looked like that; it’s honestly sort of creepy.

Gojo told him that it’s quite rare for strangers to be invited around clan estate except for certain special occasions and for closest allies because protecting baby sorcerers was such a difficult task.

Meanwhile at the house, Gojo knows his wife is annoyed because he’s kind of not really been holding up his end of the bargain. Even though he said he was really too busy to be married, the fact that he hadn’t come home or had any conversations with her about anything but business and day-to-day stuff was not sufficient. He knew he needed to do better, especially if his wife was getting this frustrated.

There wasn’t anything in the world that he could complain about as far as Chiyo was concerned. Way back when he became leader of the clan, his grandmother continued to do the things that would normally be done by the wife of the clan leader because he was so young. It was supposed to be a short-term issue meant to keep things in order until he got a little older and married, which he just…didn’t do.

Chiyo has taken on all of that work, she is playing along to cover up his indiscretion, she sends him sweets nearly every single day, she’s very nice and patient and will help him with whatever he needs, she planned their annual festival by herself, and she has been answering all his correspondence and sending it to him to sign so he’s actually had more time to focus on other things. She’s also been through the strife that comes when a group of women is disrupted by a woman being introduced to the top of that order. Not all the ladies in the clan were thrilled about the change.

Telling a fifty-year-old widow who had married into the clan thirty years ago that she has to pay respect to a twenty-four year old due to social hierarchy is rough.

So yes, he’s been reaping all the benefits of having a very hardworking and capable spouse without actually putting any effort at all into the relationship.

He can tell that she is agitated about all of it.

Still she humbles herself and apologizes to him for criticizing him in front of his student.

Gojo says, “Don’t worry about it. I’m not that kind of guy. My students know I’m an idiot and a pain in the ass. Sorry about everything. I didn’t actually know you had something else you wanted to be doing with your life. Because I never asked, but that still sucks.”

Sitting backward on the piano bench, she says, “That’s sorcery, right? If you grew up wanting to be something else, you’d still have become a sorcerer.”

“That’s true.”

Gojo sits down next to her, and she says, “We could be happy, right? I mean, there’s no rule saying we can’t. You’re a good guy. I know you like to smell all the different flowers you meet, but I’m a flower too.”

“After recent events, I have been cured of my need to smell all the flowers. I can be a one-flower guy. Especially since my one flower happens to be the finest blossom in the garden.”

She asks, “Are you flirting with me?”

“I’m trying. Let me make it.”

Gojo has been in a state of negative libido since finding out he was going to be a father but feels like he probably needs to dust himself off and be normal again.

His wife is cute as hell, and he’s a damn sucker for long black hair.

He kind of finds it a turnoff that she’s never even been kissed, that level of virginity at age twenty-four is so weird to him. He feels like a vile old tomcat who has been around the neighborhood for fifteen years, prowling about after a cute little she-cat taking her first steps onto the porch to see what’s going on outside.

It feels immoral to him in some way, even though they’re both mature adults, and they’re supposed to be doing it. That’s like…the whole marriage thing. Making love, and having babies, and all that.

She communicates that she wants it, and he’s sure he’ll have a good time once he’s in the mood.

When Yuji and Ryokun return from exploring, it’s getting dark, and Yuji pokes his head in and finds things seem to be okay. The married couple is laughing and talking in the living room, and so they cautiously enter.

Gojo shows them a room upstairs with a big bed that’s been prepared for their guests. He was going to set up another room for Yuji, but Yuji said it was pointless and that Ryokun would find a way to sleep on top of him no matter what room Yuji slept in.

Chiyo has been having baths at the private bath in their wing since she’s hiding a flat belly, but Gojo takes the boys on a winding journey through the huge residence for their bath. The estate’s main home is actually more like a series of homes joined by breezeways, courtyards, and covered paths.

They follow a certain route until they reach the men’s bathhouse. It’s quite big, and the water has healing oils and salts added to it, giving the room a rather calming scent.

Yuji has to wash Ryokun, and then himself at the shower station on one side of the room, and Ryokun just wants to get in the bath.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yuji sees Gojo’s body for the first time. It’s not polite to stare, but Yuji sees that he’s got some scary scars.

Gojo asks, “How about you let me wash your back, since you’re having to put in the effort on the little demon there?”

Yuji agrees and after he washes up, and Gojo is scrubbing his back with a cloth, he asks, “I know it’s rude to ask, but those scars…”

“You know how it is. Sorcery is a dangerous game. Most of these scars came from one single fight.”

“Seriously?!”

“Yeah. I was about your age, in high school.”

“I’d hate to see the other guy.”

“You won’t, if you know what I mean.”

Ryokun asks, “Did Miss Shoko kiss it and make it better?”

“Does she do that for you?” Gojo asks.

“Mhmm!”

Gojo is kind of surprised by this, like she’s secretly cute with Ryokun despite pretending he annoys her, and answers, “Kind of. She blew cigarette smoke in my face and called me a dummy.”

When they finally get in the bath, Ryokun sits on one of the steps since he’s little, and they sink under the hot water.

“So relaxing,” Yuji mumbles.

Ryokun leans forward and Yuji prevents him from falling into the deeper water. “Just as a warning, Ryokun can’t swim but he seems hypnotized by water. Like a moth to a flame.”

“I can ask my wife if she can give him lessons or have someone else give him lessons.”

“Is that really okay?”

“She’ll help me with whatever I need her to do. That’s the deal. She’s the queen of the Gojo clan, and her most important duty is to assist me with whatever I’m trying to accomplish.”

Yuji says, “That seems unfair.”

Gojo is quiet for a minute and says, “Sorcerers are typically very unequal partners in relationships. There are exceptions to every rule, but generally speaking, the spouses of sorcerers have to do a lot more than a normal partner would. We go through all kinds of things, work all sorts of weird hours, travel for this job or to do that, watch our friends die, discover half-eaten kids…like you’re never going to be a guy who is doing half the housework, half the cooking, half the childcare. You’re going to have a crazy schedule that leaves you emotionally exhausted. When you marry, your wife will probably take care of you and do basically everything at home. She will deal with you having occasional emotional breakdowns, or being difficult because you’re stressed and you don’t want to talk, or being angry that you couldn’t help someone.

“And that’s just your household stuff. Sorcerers usually have broad obligations beyond that. I am simultaneously the head of this clan, a teacher, and a special grade sorcerer. The person who became my wife has kinds of extra responsibilities besides normal wife stuff.”

Yuji asks, “Why would she do that when she could just leave and go do her music?”

“Ignoring the consequences of leaving a clan, the thing about sorcery is that we all have to do our part. It’s typically been, ‘the boys have to learn how to fight, and the girls take care of them and have babies.’ If you’re a guy in the sorcery clan, it’s not like you have more options or anything. We all accept our fate. And honestly, being lady of the Gojo clan isn’t the worst thing. Clearly, I could do better by my wife, but I’ll take good care of her. She’s a good girl.”

Yuji thinks about Yuko, about her question about how he could take care of everyone and be a sorcerer if no one was taking care of him.

Gojo asks, “Are you thinking about that girl?”

His student nods. “Yeah. I don’t want to be unfair to her. I feel this really intense happiness when I’m with her.”

“This is just my opinion, but if you care for her and she cares for you, I think you are actually being unfair in thinking anything else should matter.”

“Why?”

The teacher answers, “You’re over here doing a job where you might get killed tomorrow, but you think she shouldn’t also be allowed to make a decision that could be dangerous for her. That’s actually very patronizing, if you think about it. How many times in your life have you been truly loved by anyone? How many times do you think it will happen in your life before you die? I’m just saying, it’s not noble to throw away the precious feelings of a person you also care for. That would just make you a self-righteous asshole.

“You can deny yourself when it’s your turn to feel joy, but you won’t be given a choice when it’s your turn to suffer. That is one of life’s promises to you as a human being.”

This very serious conversation is interrupted by Ryokun floating on his back toward the middle of the bath.

Yuji turns and says, “Don’t play in the bath.”

“This is my happy place,” Ryokun answers.

“Can you be happy without having your thing out of the water please?”

“No.”

Yuji excuses himself from the conversation and puts Ryokun back on the little step. “Do you want to get out?”

“If I wanted to, I would.”

Gojo says, “I’ve got a little cousin that’s a handful like him. I can’t wait for them to meet. I bet they fight. My money is on Ryokun.”

Yuji answers, “I don’t know that betting on toddler brawls is appropriate behavior for a teacher or like…anyone?”

“They’re little sorcerers, let them.”

Yuji sighs.

While they’re soaking, the door slides open, and an old man comes in and Gojo gives an informal introduction to his great uncle, Souta Gojo as he gets out of the water and puts a towel around his waist. The old man has two prosthetic legs that have to be removed for bathing, and he fusses and curses at Satoru as he helps and says he doesn’t need it, but doesn’t stop him.

With skin that’s a patchwork of different scars at different ages, Satoru tells the young sorcerers that the old man is one of the absolute greats while they observe the toll that the sorcery lifestyle took on his body.

Yuji feels the incredible anxiety of a parent hoping his child doesn’t say something embarrassing to a disabled person, and his hopes are immediately trampled when Ryokun asks very loudly and very clearly why the old man doesn’t have legs.

It does not help Yuji’s shame, but the old man laughs at the question and Yuji’s anxiety and casually answers that a cursed spirit bit them off.

Souta Gojo was a bounty hunter before retirement, someone who took jobs in countries that didn’t have proper sorcerers to deal with situations like curse users causing trouble or a powerful cursed spirit. He entertained them with a story of fighting a giant curse at sea after the ship they went on sank and they were forced to jump into the sea where the curse was.

Sinking into the ocean at night with a giant curse swimming around in the water below sounded terrifying for Yuji, but Ryokun was spellbound as Souta told them about swimming under the water with his cursed weapon and fighting the curse until it finally died. After it was gone, he survived by finding some floating ship debris that kept him out of the water where the sharks were.

They are happy and pruned when they all get out together, and Gojo helps the old man again.

When Souta is dressed, he sees Ryokun in his little lion pajamas and pretended to be started.

“Oh, is that you, little boy? I thought you were a lion, and I was gonna have to wrangle you!”

“Rawwrr!” Ryokun growls, holding his hands up like little claws.

The party splits and Souta goes on toward his own home, but while the other group is walking back to Gojo’s residence, Yuji says, “Your uncle seems neat.”

“He’s still tough when he wants to be. Growing up, I did a lot of my training with him, and he was already like that then.”

Yuji asks, “By the way, what’s with the demon tree?”

“I’ll tell you later. It’s actually a long and interesting story.”

Ryokun has had a full day, and he is coaxed upstairs to bed with the promises of more music, and while drifting peacefully to sleep to gentle guitar music, Gojo sits with Yuji out in the courtyard, taking in the summer night.

“So…the TREE. I have to know,” Yuji asks.

“Kotaru is a cursed object, except the cursed object is a tree and not something like a sword. It was made accidentally when the roots of the tree ran under our family graveyard and started leeching the sentiments and cursed energy from deceased members of the family.

“Kotaru is basically a giant tree monster with thousands of giant roots that stretch all over the estate. It constantly monitors every blade of grass within these walls and if it detects intruders or attackers, it will snatch them with its roots, drag them to the trunk, and eat them. It doesn’t communicate with us at all or anything, just eats people who come over that wall to start trouble.

“It somehow knows exactly who to get and who to leave alone, so we think it can either sense sentiment or that it might be sentient which is maybe scarier? It’s never attacked someone in error, doesn’t meddle in clan disagreements, and behaves during parties and when guests are around.”

As he listens to his teacher, Yuji wonders if Gojo actually knows how weird all of this is. If Gojo has always lived in the world of sorcery, does he know how bizarre and shocking it is that he grew up under the careful watch of a monster tree that would have eaten anyone who posed a threat to him?

Does he know this is not normal for a little boy growing up in Japan?

The Gojo clan estate is about one square kilometers in size, and Kotaru’s massive roots stretch to the wall on every side, meaning that even though the tree is one of the tallest Yuji has ever seen, it’s a very small part of the full body.

According to Gojo, Kotaru is probably more fragile than most cursed objects if an attacker could get to the trunk, but it can snatch people out of the air with its roots and branches and it’s protected by the Gojo clan, so it’s never happened.

“The Jujutsu Society wants Kotaru gone because even if they wanted to, they couldn’t take against the Gojo clan if they ever had a reason to. The Zenin clan fuels those flames with all the gasoline they can get their hands on. They don’t think we should have it and have gone so far as to accuse us of making it on purpose.”

Yuji says, “I saw a flash of this place when I was outside earlier. Of the tree, broken. This place was totally wrecked to the point of being almost unrecognizable.”

“You think our girl Smoke came here?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I was here when the actual destruction happened, just after.”

If this vision came by itself, it would be disheartening, but Gojo and Yuji have come to an understanding that basically everything and everyone is destroyed in the future Yuji came from. It’s not surprising to hear that also included the Gojo clan and they had already assumed the end of the world they live in probably also meant the end of the clan system.

It was kind of wild to imagine all those roots coming out of the ground to fight an unstoppable demon.

The apocalypse was probably visually stunning, with everything in the world behind torn down and left in tatters for those who managed to survive.

After Yuji goes to bed, Satoru hypes himself up and heads to the bedroom, where is greeted by his wife in lacy lingerie and no fake tummy.

She’s inexperienced, so a little uneasy and not sure what to do.

Gets nervous, asks, “Is it in,” while all of his clothes are still on.

To which he replies, “Yes,” and they laugh, and then it’s fine after that. Sweet, kind of funny, the kind of situation where they’re able to laugh and have fun.

It’s actually quite nice, even though it’s not wild or sexually explosive, it’s sort of wholesome to him in a way. Afterward, they spend a lot of time talking.

In their community, top-choice girls usually get married at around age twenty-one, a year after their coming of age ceremony, and she was twenty-four, which is sort of rare for someone at her level. She’s competent, nice, one of the most beautiful people he’s ever known personally, but she was mostly delayed because his grandmother was trying to make them happen and he wouldn’t even meet with her. After a while, they started talking with the Zenin clan.

Satoru wishes he’d married her when his grandmother asked the first time and that this kid that was coming really was her baby because he could tell she was going to be a really good mother. It was kind of awful that he thumbed his nose at her then and then made such a sloppy mess of things.

He apologizes to her for this, and she reaches over and drags the guitar into the bed, and then starts singing a song about how she doesn’t mind because she’s going to wait two weeks after the baby is born and post her post-baby pics of her perfect little flat tummy on social media to her friends, who have all married and poked fun at her for still being on the shelf at her age despite her looks.

Gojo teases, “How deceitful and scandalous!”

Strumming the guitar, she sings in reply, “Deceitful and scandalous, like getting a serial killer pregnant and keeping her imprisoned in your grandfather’s whore cottage.”

He laughs. “My bad, my bad. I hope all the girls who made fun of you see how hot you are and feel like shit.”

She strums the guitar again. “Look at my husband, he’s so supportive, of my dreams to humiliate my friends who I love very much. Truly a perfect man!”

Gojo has been through partners, but Chiyo’s weird little way of being a very proper and polite girl when she is speaking and then singing all her complaints, scandals, and grumblings is objectively funny.

She’s quite lovable, actually.

When his grandmother realizes how much he genuinely likes her, she’s going to ‘I told you so’ him until she dies.

They talk about Ingrid too.

“I don’t think you should hate her,” Chiyo says.

“Why? She’s awful.”

Chiyo answers, “Women aren’t like men. We don’t kill for the same reasons. Men kill for all kinds of foolishness, but women by nature aren’t really killers. How many murdering curse users are actually women?”

“Three percent.”

“I assume you understand that women are just generally less likely to kill, and that when you catch one that is a killer, they’re usually not killing for pride or greed or envy?”

Gojo shrugs. “You’re not wrong.”

She asks, “I talk to Ingrid every day. It’s actually quite sad. She comes from a very traditional clan, one that still sterilizes women if they leave so they don’t proliferate techniques without permission. If she’d been born with cursed energy, she would have been like me, a pretty girl from a clan with a decent future.

“But she was born without cursed energy, which means no one trying to make more sorcerers would have her since her children will have such a high chance of having no cursed energy too. From when she was born, she was treated like she was worthless, a burden, like her life had no value.

“Growing up as a woman in a sorcery clan, it’s impressed onto us from birth that the most important thing we can ever do is use our wombs to create power for someone else.

“Since Ingrid had no chance of marrying a sorcerer, her options were to remain with the clan who treated her as a burden, or choose sterilization and leave the clan, which if you’ve been told that the only value you have as a person is to have babies, is unacceptable.

“Ingrid used her body to create power for someone else, just in a different way than most. As for how she could do something so inhuman, please keep in mind she was raised believing her life was worthless. I’m not blaming her choices on her circumstances, but she did something inhuman after being dehumanized.”

Chiyo isn’t exactly asking him to have compassion for Ingrid, but he feels like she’s forcing him to acknowledge that Ingrid didn’t just wake up one day and decide to do something incomprehensibly evil for stupid reasons.

The real villains in Ingrid’s story are her family and especially her brother.

Gojo asks, “You don’t want to keep her around, do you?”

With a shake over her head, she answers, “No, I think she’d be a danger to the baby. Sometimes she has sort of a ‘if I can’t have her, no one should’ kind of sentiment. Sometimes she seems like she wishes she could be a mom to her, too. I don’t know—it’s sad when you meet someone and know their life would be different if the world was just a little kinder to them. Oh she’s a monster, but how much had to go wrong inside of her for that to happen?”

Because he doesn’t like admitting his own faults in the matter since he was a manipulated but otherwise willing participant in the activities that created the baby, he crinkles up his nose stubbornly. He knows she’s right and that there are probably layers upon layers of crazy shit piled up inside that Ingrid’s mind because he saw Suguru Geto change into a monster who didn’t believe that people’s lives had any value.

It's the age old, inescapable fact that humans are terrible and curse each other constantly.

Gojo just gave Yuji the whole speech about men and women both facing limited choices in sorcery, but his wife was just reminding him that things are still much worse for women and that sometimes abusing people until they become completely broken had consequences.

She says, “It seems like the most powerful sorcerer could help change things if he just opened his mouth and talked about it a little.”

“You want me to use my influence to try and force progress on the clans?”

“Is that impossible for you?”

Gojo answers, “Ingrid obviously came from outside of my jurisdiction, but I might be able to move the needle here in Japan. For now, I have to choose my battles wisely, but I have a long-term plan.”

“Is it too much for me to ask?”

“I will always have an ear for my queen. But…I heard you call the baby a ‘her,’ is it a girl?”

“Yes. A girl.”

Gojo is reminded of Yuji’s vision of a girl with Six Eyes.

In the morning, he feels quite lovey-dovey because he’s discovered he actually likes his wife, but they have houseguests and by the time he’s awake, she’s already downstairs making breakfast while chatting with Yuji, who is giving her a list of the things she needs to know about Ryokun.

The men are heading out after breakfast to return to Tokyo, and Yuji is clearly worried that Ryokun will be a handful, or will be difficult, or will have trouble sleeping alone.

As she plates the breakfast and serves them, Gojo sees the plate set in front of Ryokun’s booster seat has a lion pancake on it, and he’s a little bit jealous.

When she says she’s going upstairs to wake him up, they are startled at the table when they hear shouting in a strange tongue and guitar playing ‘Circle of Life’ from Lion King.

Serenading Ryokun in his lion pajamas, the boy wakes up and pulls the maned hood up and revels in pure excitement.

When the song is almost over, she puts the guitar down and carries him downstairs, belting out the song loudly with no music, and holds Ryokun over the kitchen table like the monkey holding the lion cub off the edge of the cliff at the beginning of the movie.

Ryokun is so happy with starting his day like this he sits at the table and kicks his feet as they hang from the chair, and Yuji realizes that Gojo married a person who is goofy and dramatic and liked doing silly stuff for fun just like him. They are the same, except she does it with music.

It makes Gojo’s ridiculousness seem untalented and basic by comparison. He’s absurd; she’s absurd with music.

The toddler is so hyped that he doesn’t really fuss when it’s time for Yuji to go, which is a relief.

When Ryokun is outside that morning, playing harmonica for a cat who does not wish to hear him play harmonica, he is being watched.

High in the branches of Kotaru, the cursed the gingko tree, Uraume never takes her eyes off him. Because she shares blood with these people, the tree has allowed her to be there.

A thousand years, and some of the trees she played under as a child are still here, now towering giants. A few of the buildings have survived too—the old shrine, and the old armory where her grandfather made some of the most legendary cursed weapons.

When her father Michizane Sugawara died, he left behind a host of concubines and children, who began a war for the right to control the fate of the Sugawara clan. A girl born into this clan, she was the youngest, and in her older brother’s zeal to protect his place, she faced the fate of a woman expelled from her clan in favor of another bloodline: sterilization.

It was a bloody and dangerous procedure, a sharp metal poker heated until glowing hot…no one really knew what exactly they were doing. They just knew if they did enough damage, there would never be a baby. Many who went through this died.

She didn’t.

But she never really grew up either, never developed as a female, and wandered the earth as a woman in her thirties with people trying to find out if she was a boy child or a girl child.

Her father said he loved her the most, but he didn’t mention her in his will, didn’t ask for her to be shown mercy.

Uraume can’t exactly remember what she did when she left this place, but whatever it was, it caused most of her surviving siblings to mortally fear her. She thinks they were afraid of the name she can’t remember, which is strange, because she can’t remember the name of her father’s killer either.

It really seems like maybe her father betrayed her in death, and so she allied with his killer. Her brothers feared her because they did not want to end up like their father—yes, that’s what makes sense. That’s right, it was definitely her fault that most of them died. There is so much that she can’t remember, but there are things she can remember.

Kenjaku was right about being able to determine some details about the missing information in her mind by laying out the details, but unlike Kenjaku, she was very close to that source of missing information.

There was a difference between knowing about someone, a difference between having a collection of facts that are missing and having a piece of one’s self missing.

It’s been a thousand years, so of course, everything changed.

The missing part of her is in that little boy, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that. She’s certain that this little boy isn’t the same person as the person she can no longer remember, but he is someone she could make new memories of.

Uraume wonders if she agreed to participate in Kenjaku’s stupid plan because he promised to reunite her with that person, when all along, that person had died and already been reborn? Did he string her along with lies?

Even worse, she is sure that Kenjaku is going to do something terrible to this little boy, to her precious young master, who is so tender in age and spirit that he is joyful over a simple song or meeting a friendly animal.

Uraume doesn’t know what happened or didn’t happen, but in no circumstance does her master deserve to be afflicted by Kenjaku’s madness. His one and only wish is to live his life happily with the person who cared for him.

Still, splitting with Kenjaku is dangerous.

Kenjaku is dangerous.

He’s protected by a binding vow that prevents her from actually telling anyone anything meaningful about him.

Tit for tat, she could never win against him while he’s in Suguru Geto’s body.

She has already betrayed him, so she assumes he will send Jogo after her. For obvious reasons, he’s the worst possible match for her.

Even though Uraume knows she is strong, she doesn’t know how long she will last while she is on the outs with Kenjaku. The fact she had the nerve to ruin his little mission has probably made him blind with rage, especially after he was so pleased with himself after his first slop op to get Tore Reksten.

He tried his luck again and not only failed, but he put a card on the table that should have stayed hidden.

Those boys who fought Suguru Geto’s curses during the Night Parade saw Kenjaku’s work using Geto’s technique. Even Kenjaku has to know there’s a chance they found trace amounts of residue, or realized it was the same.

He’s getting greedy with the unplanned details—Tore Reksten and Ryokun, things that were not part of his great masterful genius scheme to…whatever it is he’s trying to do. Kenjaku showed off the special grades at Hamamatsu and used Geto’s technique at Shibuya, and she believes a decent tactician would know not to mess around at a place where he planned to fight again in the future.

A likely consequence of him making such a huge mess in the middle of Shibuya is that the Jujutsu Society is going to sit around and start gaming out what they’ll do if there are other attacks in more densely populated areas. The operation to kidnap Ryokun started at Yoyogi Park, but surely someone has already had the thought that it was fortunate it was there and not at the crossing.

What if something bad happened there?

That’s something a reasonable person would think.

Uraume has no idea that later that afternoon and into the night, Gojo goes with Yuji and they walk all over the Shibuya area, and then they come back late at night after the trains stop running and do it again.

When they return to the campus with coffee, Yuji carefully documents everything he scribbled down in a notebook while he was on the proverbial terror trail.

They put the clues on the board, and since Shinjuku and Shibuya aren’t geographically that far apart, they ponder whether they occurred at the same time.

Yuji thinks for a moment and says, “No. It didn’t happen at the same time.”

“Are you sure?”

“In Earlier Shinjuku, it was snowing. When Nanami and Kugisaki died, Nanami was wearing a thin shirt with his sleeves rolled up. Kugisaki had the kind of tights or whatever on where you can see the skin underneath. Their shoes were wrong. It wasn’t cold or snowing.”

They shift all their little notes around to make space for a third event, and Yuji says, “There’s something else. In earlier Shinjuku, I saw a poster. It was huge on the side of a building; half the poster was missing because the building had been damaged. Then at later Shinjuku, the same poster in the same place, but it’s sun-bleached and peeling.”

This is already a clue that is on their board and one of the reasons they were sure that there was no cleanup effort between Earlier and Later Shinjuku events.

Yuji says, “I saw a poster in a flash from Shibuya, but I saw the whole thing. It was a poster for the new Dragonball movie.”

Gojo is pretty into Dragonball, so his first response is, “The one that comes out in December?”

This is followed by a moment of realization.

Yuji searches for an image of the poster and finds it online. “This one.”

“What day does the movie come out?” Gojo asks.

The teenager taps a link and says, “December 18.”

Gojo has added a dry erase board to their little secret cave, and he walks over and uncaps a blue marker as he speaks.

“Let’s say the advertising for this film starts a couple of months before it opens. October 18, and ends a month after, January 18. I think that’s generous, the window is actually probably a lot narrower. We know the world is mostly normal up until October 18, because the posters are put up. We know the world ceases to be normal by January 18, because the poster at Shinjuku is never removed.

“That means that between October 18 and January 18 of this year, both Shibuya and Earlier Shinjuku occur, and the world falls apart. Based on the fact that weather moves from warmer to colder during this period, we know Shibuya happens first, and Earlier Shinjuku second, which tracks with our theory that Earlier Shinjuku is the event that ruins everything.”

There’s something considerably more significant about this discovery.

“Yuji, it is September 4^th. You didn’t come from a future that goes bad eventually. You came from a future that is absolutely cooked by mid-January at the latest. This isn’t going to happen at some point in the future. October is next month.”

Yuji says, “I was yelling your name. At Shibuya. Screaming at a man to give you back.”

“Uh-oh. So I do kick the bucket,” Gojo says, both of them misinterpreting the idea that Gojo was ‘taken’ from them. Since people might say a killed person was taken by the person who killed them, this is the assumed context, because how would they ever guess what was actually meant was that he was placed in a small container and kidnapped?

Gojo puts his name down on a note. “So I die at Shibuya, the same as Nanami and Kugisaki. That sucks. Do you remember who you were yelling this at?”

“He was tall, maybe late twenties, early thirties. He had really long black hair, and was wearing robes like a Buddhist monk. He had…what are those earrings called that are kind of big and stretch out your ears?”

Yuji sees Gojo’s entire countenance change.

For a little while, he just stands there, with this weird pout on his mouth. It’s so out of place on him, and then when he moves again, he takes out his phone and flips through his photo album.

When he holds out his phone with a picture of Suguru Geto on it, Yuji says, “Yeah, that’s the guy. Do you know him?”

Gojo puts his phone back in his pocket. “Yeah. Let’s pick this up tomorrow. I’m tired.”

It seems abrupt, and Yuji can tell that Gojo is upset about the involvement of this person, whoever it is.

As soon as his student leaves, Gojo sinks to the floor and tries to piece it all together.

He knows he trusts that Yuji’s visions are correct.

He knows Yuji doesn’t have a reason to lie.

Aoi Todo and Noritoshi Kamo said it plainly, that the attack on Ryokun looked and felt like Suguru Geto’s sorcery. Gojo was so confident that Suguru was dead that he never gave it any thought.

His relationship with Geto was a nasty emotional entanglement for him, and it was messy at the end, but he felt like he had resolved it. At the very least, if Suguru was dead, things were over.

Logistically, it doesn’t make sense that he’s not dead.

He just can’t make that part work.

But ignoring that because he just can’t understand how Suguru could actually be alive, he’s left with the saddest, most depressing question of all.

Would Suguru kill me?

Gojo knows there’s a mountain of evidence in Yuji’s visions to suggest he just fucking dies and isn’t around for anything bad that happens, and even Tengen has been perplexed because who could even do something like that?

Suguru could.

If he planned, put all his ducks in a row, paid attention to the details, did this and that a certain way…Suguru could kill him.

For a long time, he just sits there on the floor, and everything inside of him feels so bad.

There’s this horrible, horrible, horrible, awful, inexplicably bad feeling in his heart, not necessarily about himself specifically, but about that baby.

Gojo conceived that baby under horrible circumstances, being selfish. He’s been unhappy about the fact the baby even exists, and if he’d found out about her very early in the pregnancy, he probably would have been relieved to terminate and move on.

He hasn’t celebrated her life in any way. He’s not excited. His wife manages that whole situation and never tells him anything about it because he doesn’t want to know. He’s not reading books about being a parent or getting things for his daughter.

But he is going to die and leave that baby with Limitless Six Eyes, because that’s how Yuji sees her. She will grow up in hell world, probably being treated like a weapon and not a human being because that’s how his childhood was. He has no idea if Chiyo will take care of her after he dies or if Chiyo will even survive the Gojo estate getting trashed, but he knows the baby can’t go with her birth mother.

There might not even be any family for her, so he has no idea what her life will be like, only that it’s going to be bad. Then she’ll live for sixteen or seventeen years and die by having her eyes stabbed through with huge spikes and having her head ripped off her body.

And that’s it.

In Yuji’s timeline, that was her life.

It’s a life he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy—that he would create this life and then give her nothing but his greatest curse so she could live a little while and die before she even grows up all the way.

Is this really going to happen, because of Suguru?

Suguru dreamed about a world without ‘monkeys,’ and Yuji’s visions seem to suggest that monkeys do not fare well in the future.

Is it possible that Geto made Smoke, the omnipotent purple-haired villain who wipes the entire Jujutsu Society? Maybe Smoke isn’t a single curse, but a collection of curses he somehow combined using his technique? Could he do that?

He is so confused, and his heart is so broken.

Wasn’t Suguru his friend? His one and only friend? The first person he could acknowledge as being great like him? The first person he ever kissed? His first everything? Didn’t he know that Satoru wanted to lay down in the alley and die with him?

Maybe it was fair; Gojo killed Suguru to protect the world he believed in.

Maybe Suguru was willing to kill him for the world that he believed in.

As his mind reels back through the conversation he’d just had with his wife about how being dehumanized makes people stop behaving like humans and treating others like humans, he considers how this happened in Suguru’s life.

Gojo returns to his clan’s estate, by warp this time, and doesn’t tell anyone that he’s there.

Uraume is half asleep up in the cursed tree when she sees him, and she does her best to conceal her presence. The tree’s branches do a good job of that, but he’s far, heading to the clan’s graveyard.

He goes into a shed, retrieves a shovel, comes out, goes to a certain grave, and starts digging.

Her mouth twists into a bit of a grin because she doesn’t even need to guess about whose grave he is digging up. While she has no idea how he found out, and she doubts he knows everything, he’s figured out something.

The metal urn containing what should be Geto’s bones and ashes is still perfectly sealed, and he breaks the seal and reaches into it with a shaking hand for a human skull.

When powerful sorcerers die, their bones have a property similar to cursed radioactivity. Powerful sentiments can possess or taint anyone who handles them, and they emit small amounts of residue for long periods. Sealing them and protecting them during this time period is critically important.

The giant cursed tree is a reminder of how dangerous it can be when even the bones of a powerful sorcerer interact with the world in any sort of way.

Therefore, Gojo would expect Geto’s bones to still contain amounts of cursed energy still easily detectable with Six Eyes.

There’s nothing.

Gojo has no idea who this is, but it’s not Suguru Geto.

His mind reels at this revelation, and he quietly reburies the remains in the grave.

Gojo is very tired, and he is also very sad.

He wonders if Chiyo would mind sharing a bed with a very mopey boy. He’s already there, right? Warping back to Tokyo would just make him more tired. She is very wholesome and good, and he kind of wants to be close to her.

Satoru visits the bathhouse first since he’s dirty and was just handling grave soil, and then heads to bed.

His sleeping blindfold—thicker than one he would wear outside of bed—is on, and he’s exhausted when he slides between the sheets.

As he reaches across to put his arm around his wife and pull her close, he feels very little, sharp teeth bite down on his arm.

Satoru pulls the covers down and his blindfold up, and glowing blue and red eyes appraise each other with irritation.

“What are you doing here?” Gojo whispers.

“What are you doing here?”

“This is my bed. That’s my wife.”

“She loves me now.”

Did he want to fight with this unruly child? He knows if he makes Ryokun get out of bed, he’ll scream and make a fuss, and Gojo is tired. He thinks about going to a different room, but that’s effort.

The bed is huge and so he just rolls over onto his side, where he finds a very hard toy jabbing into his side. And…crumbs?

Is this how Yuji lives?

Gojo moves brushes the crumbs away, and puts the toy on the nightstand, and moves the orange cat stuffy.

He tries to sleep, but can’t, despite his exhaustion.

Part of it is probably the little feet that are evidently trying to gradually push him off the bed, although the pressure feels kind of good on his back, and part of it is the fact that he’s just really sad.

Gojo takes out his phone and looks through old photos again, pausing to stare at a picture of Suguru.

Ryokun suddenly looks over his shoulder and whispers.

“Kenjaku. Yuck.”

Chapter Text

Sukuna is on a journey.

He set up a very nice tomb for himself, an island domain that reminded him of his most precious memory, when he traveled with Sayuri once, far into the untarnished wilds of the north. She was still quite young then, and he accidentally fell asleep in a field of soft grass.

When he awoke, he panicked for a moment, and was about to go search for Sayuri, but found she had covered him with a blanket and then laid down to sleep beside him.

Sukuna watched her sleep for a while, under a sky full of stars, on a warm summer night with a cool breeze that lightly rustled the wild-flower dotted grass, the sounds of the sea and insects quietly whispering in the background.

It was a perfect moment.

His happy place—not a pool of blood with a throne of bones.

The beauty of the tomb is a reminder of how much he was somehow able to let go in the end.

Sukuna could have stayed in that place, watch his reincarnation live his life, and rest peacefully. Death was fine; he chose it and accepted it and all that, but he had unfinished business and remained a restless soul.

So he made a boat inside of his domain and placed it on the water to begin his trip, unsure of what would actually happen.

The ocean was unfriendly, and filled with strange creatures, like little golden-scaled fish, which would come to the surface and speak to him, trying to make him doubt himself and turn back to his tomb. The questions started off small:

What if you sail forever, and there’s nothing?

What if you can’t accomplish anything?

What if this is pointless?

As he sailed on, the waves became more unfriendly, and stranger creatures appeared. Divine creatures, but he thinks they seem like they are similar in some peculiar way to cursed spirits.

One day snatched one of the golden-scaled fish out of the water and eats it, using its scales to reinforce his boat.

After he did this a few times, his spirit felt quite strong, but the little fish stopped swimming to the surface to annoy him.

Good.

Sukuna could see larger creatures swimming deeper, and as his journey continued, made himself a bone blade, lining it with the golden scales. It was sharp and imbued with divine energy, and once complete, he plunged into the sea in pursuit of bigger game, killing a monstrous fish almost the size of him and dragging it up onto his boat.

Starting over and learning how to use a new kind of power was interesting to him.

And while he journeyed across this ocean, filled with divine creatures, he fought, he ate, he sat on his boat with scales and fins and found ways to make weapons he could use to fight even larger monsters.

On this random day, after a nap, he awakens to find illumination on the horizon, an island that seemingly has a city.

When he arrives, there is a dock, and there are people around, all wearing what he assumes were things that were normal in their time and culture. It’s very mixed, but they’re not even real clothes, just the shape of the outside of the soul, so it doesn’t matter.

Sukuna chooses to live barefoot in hakama and he doesn’t care what any of these other spirits think about him or his boat, which is now adorned in scales and bones, and the skulls of divine sea creatures he slew and ate.

Everyone seems to be staring at him in horror or maybe fear, and since he can tell how much karma they have, he assumes they can either see his astronomically high karma, or they can tell he’s been powering up by eating the local wildlife, or maybe both.

Sukuna has no idea how things work in this world, but other people are here too, so it seems he is not the only one who decided to make this journey.  

Sukuna wonders what the purpose of this is, what the benefit of wandering around this strange land is over staying in the tomb and sleeping?

Is it boring to be a spirit?

Maybe there are things to do, but traveling alone is such a bore. He hates it, actually.

While he wanders the city, which seems maybe like a very nice version of any city he’s ever been to, it’s sort of boring.

After looking around for a full day, he is approached by a man who calls him by name and begins talking to him.

Sukuna doesn’t recognize this man at all, but he drones on about how he feels like his death wasn’t in vain because ultimately such great redemption was achieved.

He’s dressed like he came from the Heian Era, and despite the minimal efforts Sukuna dedicated to this effort, he can’t remember who this person is.

“Did I kill you or something?”

He points to himself. “You don’t remember me?”

“No.”

“It was in Jinku Village.”

“Don’t remember that either.”

“I was walking down a path and was perhaps called you a wretch because of your…you know. You killed me.”

Sukuna thinks for a moment more and says, “I remember now. I ate your body and left the rest of you to the crows. You were rude and you tasted like shit.”

“I-I just want you to know that I forgive you.”

Sukuna just stares, and says, “…okay. I don’t remember apologizing.”

“You could. This is our opportunity for reconciliation. Me, a grieving soul and you, my killer who has been redeemed.”

With a sigh, the King of Curses answers, “I wasn’t redeemed, I’m not sorry about anything, and the only thing I feel right now is slight irritation. I don’t think we can die here, but I do think I can hurt you, so unless you know where the bosses of this place are, step aside.”

“Aren’t you even going to ask my name?”

“No.”

He wonders how this imbecile made it across the ocean but finds out on his second day that everyone else had a bell to ring for a ferry and Sukuna did not, and he finds that personally offensive. It almost seems like whoever placed him in the ocean didn’t want him to come to this city.

On the third day, he finally makes his way to a massive temple that seems to go on forever.

Spirits aren’t supposed to just walk up on this place, but he has absolutely no reason not to do so.

The gods that rule this place are evidently giants, and walking around kind of reminds him of when he tunes in to see what his reincarnation is up to. To Ryokun, the floor is just sort of his domain, and he lives in a world filled with giants that he loves and menaces according to his whim.

They all look so odd, some like humans, some like animals, some like plants or mushrooms. There’s one that floats around that looks like a huge jellyfish, and he walks around the enormous halls, which are lined with enormous white stones with writing he can’t read.

There are other humans scurrying about trying to not be stepped on as well, but they seem to be employees?

Sukuna can’t imagine dying as a salaryman and then deciding to do that in the afterlife too. He’s never had a proper job in his life and he’s not planning on having one in his afterlife.

Suddenly, Sukuna sees the Eye that determined his post-life judgement and sees the Eye’s whole body, discovering that it is literally just a giant eyeball attacked to two long, skinny black legs and enormous feet.

“That’s what you look like?! How did you get a job judging others when you look like that?” he calls.

The Eye, the height of a five story building, bends its long black, pliable legs over to peer at who dares to insult them and finds it is Ryomen Sukuna, with his eighty billion karma.

An arm and hand suddenly appear on the god, sticking oddly out of the bottom of the eyelid, and Sukuna is suddenly snatched off the ground and carried to a chamber containing the pitch black domain where he faced his judgement before.

The eye itself glows, but the rest of the body doesn’t, so Sukuna had been unable to see that it was bending over to glare at him with its enormous, tall absurd body before.

The Eye says, “You are not supposed to be here. We all agreed that we wanted you to go to sleep at your tomb. That’s why we put it in the middle of the Sea of Tribulation. I know you did not have bell. No ferry would have gone to that place to get you.”

“I sailed.”

“What do you mean you sailed? On what?”

Sukuna takes a long, deep breath, and says, “On a boat I built.”

“Since when do you know about boats? What is that power in your body? Did you eat some of the spirits?”

This meeting is so different than the first one, where the Eye seemed like some all-powerful force, very serious and official and calm. Now it seems kind of human in a way, a bit stressed out that that Sukuna has appeared before it.

Sukuna says, “It seemed like the natural thing to do.”

“Because you’re Ryomen Sukuna?”

“…because I am Japanese, you dumb donkey. Every Japanese person is born with the instincts of a violent, sea-faring adventurer. This instinct can only be controlled by tormenting us with the power of the sun.”

The Eye stares at him, wondering what he is actually supposed to do about this menace. There is almost nothing that Sukuna respects, and it had been everyone’s hope that he was a spirit who would decide to settle down for a restful eternity.

And yet he is there. Not only that, but he has also absorbed divine energy by eating the guardians that were supposed to keep him from making this journey.

The Eye asks, “Is there something you want?”

“Yes.”

“You dare to come ask the gods?”

“The scary deity voice doesn’t work on me now because I’ve seen how stupid your body looks.”

The Eye really wishes it could simply step on Sukuna and destroy his spirit form, but as long as Sukuna has his eighty-four billion karma, he has to treat him like the greatest saint among humans.

Sukuna isn’t sure how time works in this place, as it seems to be flowing identical to what’s going on in the mortal world in 2018. If he tunes into his reincarnation to see what that little menace is up to, he sees things as they are happening. He assumed he would be in 2035, but it is clearly 2018 in the mortal world. The Eye seems to know what happened in the alternate future. He doesn’t know about the other gods.

It's all very mysterious, but he’s not sure that he cares. He doesn’t really want to know the ins and outs of how all this works. It’s not interesting to him. In the end, he doesn’t care about any of this shit and just wants to complete his unfinished business.

He honestly wonders what the job of the gods is in the first place. It seems like if they were really all-powerful and were benevolent guardians of humanity, Sukuna would have met them much, much earlier.

Sukuna theorizes that they are limited in how much they can intervene much in human affairs, maybe only determine the conditions of who enters the mortal world.

The Eye knows Sukuna is just incredibly difficult as a whole being, and asks, “What do you want?”

Sukuna says, “I think you probably can’t do anything about what’s going on in the mortal world except when someone is entering. You erased me at the moment my reincarnation entered. Alghera was born, Sayuri came with Limitless Six Eyes. You control the human world through who is added to it.”

“You dare underestimate the gods?”

“Literally watched 99.9% of the population of earth die in six months, you were either unable to do something about that or you didn’t want to.”

The Eye asked, “What do you want?”

Sukuna answers, “Uraume.”

“Uraume. What about her?”

He answers, “I assume she’s going to die in the mortal world soon. I want her tomb to be on the same island as mine, so she doesn’t have to look for me. And I want her to remember me when it happens. I also want you to reincarnate her so that my reincarnation and hers will find each other. To Yuji and Yuko.”

“Due to certain conditions that I cannot discuss with you, she can only be reborn into the same family.”

That was certainly weird, but Sukuna assumed those freaks probably had something to do with these stupid giants. Six Eyes was just a really suspicious ability, and since Sukuna knew a lot about it, he’s sure it’s not some ability that spontaneously evolved in them.

Sukuna says, “Then give her to Satoru Gojo and his golden canary.”

The Eye answers, “Six Eyes has sent a petition to the gods to not have any more children.”

“This isn’t about what Satoru Gojo wants. If he asked you not to do it, you should give him at least five. Anyone who has ever prayed knows that’s how it works. I would be a much god than you.”

Yes, Sukuna decides that this is a really good idea. Sukuna learned only within the last day from Ryokun climbing all over Gojo’s wife that she is not pregnant with anything but a pillow, which explained why she appeared in this timeline and not the other one. He understands her fake pregnancy is essentially a baby laundering operation, similar to how people who engage in illicit activities create legitimate businesses that are mostly fake to clean the money.

Sayuri will be raised as a proper clan princess and child of the marriage, and then Uraume can be the little sister. If Sayuri has the same personality as the first time and Uraume’s reincarnation is similar to her the same way his own is to him, Uraume might be quite shy and quiet. Sayuri was the opposite of that, always wanting to go on adventures.

Sukuna has uncomfortably warm and wholesome thoughts of his two favorite people getting to be together, with those parents who will take good care of them.

Gazing down at Sukuna, the Eye considers the audacity of this immortal, even when banished to the Sea of Tribulation, and given no bell to come to this land, he still showed up, having devoured divine guardians along the way. Now, he has demands, and there’s an air of threat about him, like if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll find a way to make it everyone’s problem.

The Eye asked, “Are you confident that things will actually turn out how you wish, despite the complications that have occurred in the human world?”

“Yes. I’m confident. Yuji will handle it.”

For a redeemed soul, Sukuna is not much?

He’s not sorry about the mountain of death left in his wake, and he doesn’t voice any regrets or make any excuses for anything that happened.

He didn’t even really end on good terms.

Sukuna wasn’t trying to save everyone when he met his end, only the one person who mattered the most. A long life spent amassing power ended with the revelation that having all the power in the world wasn’t as great as living peacefully with a loved one.

The Eye finds it odd that Sukuna has come all this way for Uraume, as it appeared he did not care for her the way he cared about Sayuri. Maybe it’s the fact that he should have, or that he reevaluated his feelings, or that he was able to understand why he should treasure her, or maybe he honored her loyalty.

“Why do you want this one?”

“Does the reason matter?” Sukuna asks.

“It matters if you want me to grant your request.”

Sukuna answers, “I wish to travel around this world and look around. Adventuring alone doesn’t suit me.”

“Are you going to cause trouble?”

“I don’t know how you could even accuse me of such a thing. I saved the world, you know. Look at all of my karma.”

The Eye answers, “I will grant your request. I will send Uraume to make her tomb alongside you and allow her to reincarnate alongside your reincarnation. And give Satoru Gojo five children.”

Sukuna forgot about that last thing and realized the god didn’t understand facetiousness. He started to correct the god to say he didn’t mean it, but after a moment of consideration, he thinks this is a hilarious outcome, a true comedy of errors.

He also thinks Gojo will be the most loving goofy parent imaginable once Sayuri is born anyway.

After watching Sukuna break out into laughter for no apparent reason, the god adds, “I do not wish to see you again. Please make an effort to avoid my presence in the future.”

“Looking like that, I’m not trying to see you again either.”

Sukuna lingers in the city briefly, and then sails back to his tomb to wait for the arrival of his companion.

He wishes he could speak to her just once.

Living in a strange body is an odd sort of hell, every day a constant reminder that your soul is piloting an unintended vessel.

When Sukuna was young in his own era, and facing his own mortality, he viewed death as a kind of defeat. And maybe in some cases it was, but it was also a victory. Uraume was like him, someone who had been cursed by the cruelty of their world, so much that they took over the cycle and cursed everyone else even more.

Death was an all-powerful process that broke every curse and nullified all the accumulated resentments and hatred and pain, separating the spirit from the soul that had grown it. This form suited Sukuna; he felt so light and free without his soul, which had gone on to reside inside of Ryo Itadori.

Sukuna didn’t believe the world had anything to offer Uraume that would make her happy.  Even if she attached herself to Ryokun, they were different people.

If he was standing in the mortal world, it would seem cruel to say, but he hopes that she does die soon, so that she can be free from her cursed form and her cursed life.

When she finally makes it, he will be waiting.

Sukuna is looking forward to telling Uraume all about how he raised a child, and that it didn’t actually go that bad—how he actually had fun, but he thought often that if she’d been there, she would have laughed at him often.

He suspects that the strange imprint of his heart on Ryokun’s will cause the boy to be happy, growing up alongside both Uraume’s reincarnation and Sayuri.

As for him and Uraume, he hopes they will adventure in the spirit world and watch over their new selves walk a different path.

While he waits and reflects on these things, the brat shows up again.

Sukuna isn’t sure why it happens, but occasionally when this child sleeps his soul visits this place, probably unintentionally. He doesn’t think that the toddler remembers any of it when he wakes up, so it doesn’t matter.

“You again.”

“Look.”

Ryokun pulls a blade of grass and holds it up, and it is suddenly sliced to bits.

“Good. Very good.”

XXX

Yuji and Megumi share a knowing glance as Nobara and Yuta trail along behind them, arguing.

Since Gojo called Yuta home, his primary assignment has been to bodyguard Nobara anytime they leave the campus out of the fear that at some point, Mahito and Nobara are going to meet.

Gojo didn’t explain the purpose for this, but it’s not a comfortable situation for anyone.

Nobara has a strong personality and she’s quite aggressive, which is useful in a battle, but it takes a certain amount of patience socially.

Megumi and Yuji are fine with it, but Yuta finds her quite ‘pleasantly stressful,’ whatever that means. It’s probably the closest Yuta can get to insulting someone who isn’t a mortal enemy.

Yuji thinks there is a joke he doesn’t know how to make about Yuta liking women who yell at him. But whenever he figures out how to make it, he’s going to laugh and then he’s going to get his ass beaten by Nobara and Maki.

They meet another man at a park, a tall dark-skinned man with piercings.

Yuta introduces them to Miguel Oduol, explaining that when he was overseas, he had been sent to train with Miguel.

They continue on to meet with Gojo at a third location, a rented motel room.

He gives each of them a packet and says, “Thanks for coming. If you’re worried about getting in trouble with the higher-ups, now is your last chance to avoid it. But if you do end up in hot water, I’ll be right in it with you, so it’ll be fine.”

Miguel answers, “How does this involve me?”

Gojo says, “Miguel, just to bring you up to speed, we’ve had two incidents where special grade cursed spirits acting as a team with defined goals under clear leadership attacked strategic targets.”

“That seems unbelievable.”

He explains the Disaster Curses and the two incidents where they’ve been encountered, first kidnapping Tore Reksten in Hamamatsu and then when the nature curse took part in the failed attempt to grab Ryokun.

Then, Gojo adds, “I don’t have any positive confirmation of this right now, but I spoke to Tengen earlier about a certain clue that I was gifted by an unlikely source. It is very possible that their leader is a one thousand year old curse user named Kenjaku.

“Kenjaku is a special grade menace who has a technique that makes him virtually impossible to catch. He possesses the bodies of other sorcerers and becomes indistinguishable from them. He can even possess a body that is dead.”

Miguel crosses his arms and asks, “Why did you summon me here from Africa like I work for you to deal with some Japanese freak?”

“To see that great African physique, of course.”

Miguel puts a hand on Yuta’s shoulder and says, “Please tell this racist White Walker that I am strong because I train hard and not because I am African. Unless he wants to talk about stereotypes about Japanese men.”

Gojo answers, “All lies. Being big and muscular is a cool stereotype. Having a small imagination isn’t.”

“I worry for these children.”

Nobara says, “Hey, lay off our teacher. Even if he’s a racist idiot, he’s still our teacher.”

“Since when am I a racist?”

Idly swinging her hammer around, she answers, “I heard you saw a black man during that big deal on Christmas Eve, stopped everything you were doing, and chased him around beating the crap out of him.”

“Oh, that was Miguel. I feel like that retelling leaves out a lot of important details,” Gojo answers.

Nobara answers, “Trying to overexplain everything is exactly what a racist does.”

Yuta and Megumi slowly back away from the conversation in embarrassment, while Yuji stands a bit bewildered.

Gojo says, “Anyway, we’re here for serious business. This body-switching demon is probably in the body of Suguru Geto.”

Yuta asks, “How can that be?”

Gojo answers, “I have a basic understanding of how custody of the body was lost, but that’s not important right now.”

Yuji asks, “So what is important right now?”

Yuta’s face is twisted with the empathy he feels, knowing this is all probably very difficult for his teacher. But Gojo is being professional about it despite that, and that almost makes it worse.

Miguel looks both concerned and angry that Gojo lost the body, but a person who is honest with themselves even as one of Geto’s former loyals knows that Geto and Gojo were very special to one another and whatever happened, this is a horrible outcome for Gojo too.

Gojo says, “Kenjaku is a little like Rumpelstiltskin; half of the threat he poses comes from the fact that he’s able to move through the world without anyone knowing who he is. Right now, he’s occupying a very powerful body, and there’s probably some explicit purpose for that. Unfortunately, Kenjaku may have already switched bodies or is planning to switch to the body of a man named Tore Reksten.

“Reksten is a foreigner who came to Japan to cause trouble—Tore himself also isn’t important. What’s important is that his technique essentially allows him to ‘consume’ a person’s soul and take their technique. This is deadly, of course. One of the techniques that Reksten has stolen is extremely rare and exotic…he has the ability to bend time.

“There are a number of incredibly risky and dangerous outcomes that can occur right now.”  

The students are supposed to be training for the exchange event, but instead, they are here.

Gojo knew from the panic on Master Tengen’s face and in her voice that Kenjaku’s sudden presence is probably foundational, perhaps even the driving force behind Yuji’s apocalyptic visions.

Even though Gojo was unsure if Reksten actually died after getting hit with Infinite Void, he was sure that whoever took him wouldn’t be able to do much with him. Human brains were delicate, after all. Finding out that Reksten could have died and been equally useful to Kenjaku as if he was brain damaged or healthy causes intense worry for Gojo.

Reksten could only consume techniques he could earn by subduing enemies, so he was limited. On the world stage, he could only have this or that, little dishes, but if he wanted a big steak, he had to use his sister.

According to Tengen, Kenjaku can probably eat any dish at the banquet except for Satoru Gojo, he is that dangerous—not just in his raw power, but in his ability to set traps and manipulate enemies into vulnerable situations.

Tengen also knew Kenjaku had the Prison Realm, so that has become known to Gojo.

Gojo opens his packet and starts reviewing with them.

“Hazards into the stratosphere: he’s got Geto’s body and technique, may move to Reksten, but Master Tengen says there is a nonzero chance that he will find a way to put Reksten’s technique in Geto’s body, which is basically just a gigantic container for holding curses.

“Reksten’s two limitations are that he has to subdue an enemy to take their technique and his body can only hold so many. If he finds a way to adapt it into Geto’s body, both of those limitations will be removed.

“He has a priceless cursed object that can seal someone away regardless of their strength level, can’t imagine who that might be for.

“He’s also likely the leader of a group of at least three special grade curses, each of which could cause a mass casualty event. They’re highly intelligent and each time we’ve seen them, they used our hesitancy for collateral damage to limit our movements.

“He may have other curse users, and some of Geto’s loyalists attached to him as well.”

After laying out how dangerous the situation is, the question lingering in the air is what exactly Gojo wants to do.

Gojo says, “I know what you’re thinking! What are we going to do about it? There’s something that concerns me that will not concern the higher ups when it’s time to plan our strike.”

“What is that?” Yuji asks.

“On the security tapes of the incident with Ryokun, two teenage girls were spotted. They’re probably the scouts that were watching for an opportunity to nab him. Mimiko and Nanako Hasaba.

“When it becomes known to Geto’s inner circle that Kenjaku is just living in Geto’s corpse, they’re going to turn on him. Kenjaku obviously trusts these girls and keeps them close, but once his cover is blown, anyone who was doing anything for him becomes a tremendous liability. In other words, as soon as Kenjaku knows that we know about him, he’ll probably kill them.”

They all begin to understand what it is that Gojo wants to do.

The Jujutsu Society will only have the advantage of surprising Kenjaku with the fact they know about him one time. That’s it. Once he knows they know, the situation will be permanently altered. They could use it to stage a massive offensive, to try and disarm Kenjaku.

Gojo wants to spend this currency of surprise not on managing the threat, trying to reduce Kenjaku’s power, or targeting the special grades.

No.

He wants to spend this priceless one-time gift on saving Suguru Geto’s girls.

To Miguel, this is objectively one of the most batshit crazy things he’s ever seen anyone actually plan on doing, especially a person in such a high place. Of course the higher up are going to be mad, this is a bad thing that they should not be doing. Tactically stupid, insane, risky, dangerous, burns an advantage they can never regain for two girls who only escaped being tried for murder because Gojo already stuck his neck out for them.

To his students, Gojo is doing what Gojo does.

Miguel has, of course, heard from the others that Geto is still alive, but he kept his mouth shut about it. For some reason, he’d kind of assumed that he might still be alive but legally dead because Gojo let him go, but it seems that is not the case.

This situation is clearly incredibly distressing to Gojo, which might be why he is making this horrible decision to save Geto’s girls instead of using the strategic advantage more responsibly.

Gojo’s plan is to extract Mimiko and Nanako by having someone from the old group bring them to a place where they can be intercepted.

“Those girls are bad, Gojo. They’re not only bad, but they’re not going to believe us when we tell them the truth,” Miguel says.

Gojo opens a box full of spring-loaded syringes. “We don’t need them to believe us. We just need them to take a nice nap. Straight onto a private plane and to Africa, where you can lovingly guide them and look after them.”

“No way you’re going to assign me childcare again.”

“You’re so good at it! Besides, if they’re on the ground in Japan, you know they’ll probably go right back to him even if we tell them that’s not Geto. Geto would be grateful. If you want to get the rest of your people away from that monster, this is your chance to do it.”

The plan is simple enough, and if nothing goes wrong, there shouldn’t be any violence.

But if something goes wrong, it could probably go very wrong.

Gojo has accounted for that in his plan, and explains the plan, which largely relies on Miguel, who really wishes he could just be done with the whole cult thing.

Miguel decides he will do this one last thing as a final favor to Suguru Geto.

They travel via SUV to a ryokan in the mountains, which is completely empty except for a couple of staff members that are actually Gojo clan members. It seems well out of the way, on the side of a rocky mountain. It’s far to the bottom, and the nearest town is further still.

Gojo bought the place just for this one mission and cancelled all the reservations.

Miguel was supposed to get someone to invite the girls to this ryokan, but he is disturbed to find out from Suda that everyone in the group already knows something has stolen Geto’s body and they’ve been willingly following him anyway.

According to Suda, the girls already knew Geto isn’t Geto and they’re just going along thinking that they can save him that way, which is…really sad and somewhat delusional.

Miguel has to make a certain appeal to Suda and remind her that they joined Geto as adults and the girls were children he raised, so their situation is different.

Suda has no intention of turning the girls over to Gojo, but when Miguel tells her that he’ll be taking them out of the country for a while, she finally relents and agrees to participate in this operation.

When she hangs up the phone, she composes herself and sends ‘Geto’ a text that she wants to go on a little overnight trip to unwind and take the twins. He doesn’t have any issues with it; it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary in any sort of way.

At the ryokan, the students and ‘staff’ prepare for their two guests, while the higher-ups think Gojo has taken his students on a team-building trip to the ryokan.

Everyone involved has been warned that this operation will either be entirely uneventful, or it will be a huge shitshow.

If they successfully save the girls without incident, that’s a win.

If they accidentally pull Kenjaku or curse users or special grades, that’s also a win because there is no one around, the sorcerers would be uninhibited.

While Gojo wants the incident to go smoothly, politically, it will be best if they accomplish something else because the Jujutsu Society’s Elders are going to come for him over this matter.

It was possible they’d get really lucky too.

Or really unlucky.

When Suda reports to the cottage where Kenjaku plots alone now that Uraume has left him, he asks a couple of questions out of curiosity. She wonders what is behind a locked door, but can hear the occasional beeping of what sounds like medical devices.

Kenjaku looks the name of the ryokan up on his phone later and finds the pictures serene. It’s a legitimate place, two hundred years old, with rich natural hot springs, and according to reviews, incredible food.

He mentions to the disaster curses that he wants to visit when he regroups with them later that day, and since Hanami is actually in rather poor shape after getting clobbered nearly to death by Yuji Itadori and Aoi Todo, Jogo suggests that instead of recovering in the sewers, Hanami would do better surrounded by nature.

And so, they decide to go to this place, although Kenjaku orders the curses to stay out of sight and not cause trouble so they don’t disturb his stay.

While they are travelling, preparations are underway at the ryokan for the operation.

Yuji, Megumi, and Miguel are responsible for getting Mimiko and Nanako to the private airstrip in the valley no matter what else is happening. Nobara is still required to stick with Yuta, but to keep some safe distance if anything happens.

When Suda arrives with Mimiko and Nanako, the first and most ideal outcome is for them to listen to reason, so Souta Gojo checks them in and they join Miguel for a conversation. The girls have no ear to listen to him and are quite pissed off by the idea that they should leave Japan.

Miguel actually has no patience for kids despite being cursed to deal with them now twice by someone who was never even an ally, so he resorts to Plan B right away, and drugs them.

He opens the door to the hallway, where he calls for Yuji and Megumi, who pick up the sleeping girls.

Megumi carefully cradles Mimiko while Yuji throws Nanako over his shoulder, letting her dangle.

“That’s not how you hold a woman, Yuji.”

“That girl isn’t going to remember who held her like you just got married, and if she does, she’ll probably be pissed. Miguel said these two were rude as hell.”

Miguel answers, “Enough chit-chat, let’s go. I’m trying to get out of this country right away, because everything that happens here is crazy.”

Suda follows, because certainly, after betraying whatever is inside of Geto, she needs to stay somewhere out of his reach for a while. She saw how he raged about Uraume sabotaging the other mission.

Inside, there is relief that the result of this operation has been the ‘nothing’ route.

A whole lot of nothing, which was the best outcome.

Then the front door slides open, and a man walks in, with long hair, and monk’s robes.

Souta Gojo is working at the front desk alone, and he doesn’t show any signs that he can even see the curses behind him. To them, he’s just an old man working at the family business.

Since this establishment had a famed family recipe and was well-known for its fresh, local cuisine, Kenjaku was looking forward to having a good soak so he could consider his next moves. He is still a little pissed off the mission to capture Ryo Itadori went so poorly, and that Uraume has left him.

Souta Gojo takes Kenjaku’s money and name, and Kenjaku gives a different, irrelevant third name.

“Please allow me to give you a tour.”

The old man has a peculiar limp and shows Kenjaku around the property after providing him with a yukata and slippers.

As they pass through an interior courtyard, the man casually presses his hands together and says, “There’s a small shrine if you wish to pray.”

Kenjaku was just about to thank him for the tour when the old man smacked his hands together with such explosive force that the unsuspecting special grades were thrown through the building and in different directions, separating them from each other and from Kenjaku, who managed to resist the attack.

Kenjaku can’t sense any cursed energy coming from the man even after the attack, which can only mean that at some point, he stepped into a very clever barrier that conceals the presence of cursed energy.

He assumes the old man’s hair did not grow white with age.

When Kenjaku turns to the old man, he’s gone.

Instead, a blindfolded man is standing with his hands in his pockets.

Kenjaku feels his stomach turn; he can’t remember the last time he felt such a sense of shock or dread.

So calls the sorcerer’s name, softly. “Satoru.”

According to Gojo’s estimations that were based on nothing, there was an eighty percent chance that nothing would happen. As for the other twenty percent, who even knew?

He answers in a tone that is just as gentle, “Kenjaku Tanashiro, third son of a forgotten Heian Era warlord. Mad scientist, lunatic, murderer, body-snatcher…got his start bodysurfing and assassinating warlords to cause armed conflict and then profited and reveled in watching people murder each other for no reason.

“Apparently you’ve had a really long career that consists of arcs where you cause a bunch of stupid shit and then one of my predecessors beats the shit out of you for it. It must be my turn, huh?”

The thing is that Kenjaku can’t figure out how this possibly could have happened?

Of course, Tengen knows about him, and he has indeed had numerous unfortunate contacts with the Gojo clan. But it doesn’t matter if they know who Kenjaku is as long as they don’t know which body he is in at the moment.

Geto’s former groupies clearly understood he was someone else, but didn’t know who that someone else was, so that knowledge never mattered. Even if they told someone Geto had been possessed, it wouldn’t mean that he as Kenjaku was responsible.

The only currently living person who knew his identity and that that he was in Suguru Geto’s body was Uraume, and she couldn’t tell anyone due to a binding vow. And when he’s in a body, it’s impossible even for Satoru Gojo to tell the difference.

Somehow, Gojo had found out not only that Geto’s body had become possessed, but who had done this.

There is no element of surprise, Gojo is not emotionally disturbed, and even if he was, the Prison Realm is sealed in a locked vault a hundred kilometers away.

He can distantly hear the unmistakable shriek of Rika in the distance, in the direction that Hanami was hurled. Since Hanami is in poor condition, this means she might be in serious danger of being exorcised.

How is he going to get himself out of this?

Gojo asks, “What is it that you were planning to do to me at Shibuya?”

Kenjaku isn’t even sure if he’s mentioned that he intends to seal Gojo at Shibuya. Maybe the curses know the date, but do they know the place? As he tries to piece it together, he realizes that trying to figure out who told Gojo is irrelevant at the moment.

Satoru adds, “And then after, something worse. All the sorcerers die, right?”

AND THE CULLING GAME?

It’s impossible, really.

Kenjaku’s mind starts to race with how crazy all of this is, and there’s no way. There’s just no way. If he assumes every single person that he has interacted with in the last one hundred years told Satoru Gojo everything they knew, he still shouldn’t know about the Culling Game. That’s information no one had, something a secret only in his own mind.

Kenjaku says, “Don’t tell me…there’s someone in the Jujutsu Society with a mind-reading ability. They’d have to be able to read the minds of people they don’t know, without knowing their location. Surely that would be impossible. No, that’s not it. It’s something else.”

“You’ll never guess.”

“Some sort of foresight?”

“Wrong again!”

Sorcerers were liars, after all.

After acquiring Tore Reksten, Kenjaku was in such a good position. He had plans.

Things were going well.

What is happening now shouldn’t be possible.

So why is it happening?

Gojo pulls his blindfold off, and Kenjaku bitterly reflects on what a joke all of this is. He’ll fare better in a one-on-one against Gojo in this body than any other he’s possessed, but every avenue to victory requires the other sorcerer to make a serious mistake.

Kenjaku knows he will escape from this predicament; he always has a backup plan. The only question is what price he will have to pay to do it, and what he will lose as a result of this mistake.

Out the back, where Miguel was getting ready to take his hostages to the air strip, Mahito suddenly crash lands, having been thrown away from Kenjaku.

There are sounds of fighting in the distance; Rika’s shriek, this guy, at least one other fight.

When Mahito stands up, he dusts himself off, still a bit confused about what it is that threw him so far.

In Hamamatsu, when they encountered Gojo, he had a very light touch, so getting blasted a hundred meters up and away is dumb. Stupid. He hates it. Humans suck. He’ll find that old man and see how well his shriveled old soul tolerates a new shape.

Something in the air suddenly makes him turn, and Yuji is standing there, eyes wide, as if in a trance.

Without blinking, without breathing, without moving, Yuji sees a series of flashes. In the same way that he saw moments of joy when he saw Yuko again, imagines run through his mind.

This monster killed his friends, killed his family!

This is the largest and most complete part of his memory, and as the pieces fill themselves in, he just can’t move at all.

Yuji doesn’t snap out of his trance until Megumi tackles him and pushes him out of the way because Mahito ran for him with his hand out, causing both of them to narrowly miss being touched by him.

“What are you doing? Snap out of it!”

Megumi has no idea what’s really going on with Yuji, but his little dazed periods where he zones out or freaks out have happened on several occasions. Megumi’s fear will always be that one will happen at a time when it’s dangerous.

Like now.

The Patchface Curse, Mahito, is special grade, known to be extraordinarily dangerous, and it was no time to be distracted. The instructions from Gojo were to flee from this one no matter what and leave him to Gojo or Yuta because he could probably only be killed by obliterating his entire body in one single instant.

Miguel can tell there is violence starting up everywhere, but he has done what he said he would do. This conflict between the Japanese sorcerers about Japan is not his concern.

Suda calls his name, and he says, “We’re going on. You kids need to get away from that thing.”

“Yeah, thanks!” Megumi calls sarcastically.

Yuji collects his thoughts as the car speeds away and he stands. “Fushiguro, you can go help someone else. I can take this guy.”

“We can’t hurt him.”

Mahito mockingly says, “You should listen to him. Humans are so cute in their weakness, trying to help each other. How pathet—”

Yuji flicks his fingers and a cleave attack erupts from the end of his finger and hits Mahito right in the mouth.

Mahito touches the blood dripping from his mouth. “What a lucky shot.”

It’s followed by three more, and Megumi watches the monster bleed.

Yuji says, “Please go, Fushiguro. You can use your technique to help someone else. This one is for me. He is always for me.”

As far as Mahito knows, this is their first meeting, and he has no idea what sort of lunacy this teenager is spouting. Yuji can clearly hurt him, which is inconvenient.

“Yuji, you’re not making any sense!”

“Please go.”

Megumi decides to trust him, but warns, “If you die, I’ll kill you.”

As Fushiguro leaves Yuji with Mahito, he simply confused about what is going on with Yuji.

Mahito watches him go and asks Yuji, “How exactly can you do that? Do you know the shape of my soul?”

Yuji flexes his fists and says, “It’s not that I know the shape of my soul. It’s that I know the shape of yours.”

“And why is that?”

“You don’t need to worry about it. You wouldn’t understand if I did try to explain, because in the end, you’re not a person. You’re just a container filled with everything humans hate about themselves, wishing you could be one of us.”

Mahito smiles a bit. “You’re kind of pissing me off, talking to me like you know me. What can a foolish human ever know about a superior creature?”

The cursed spirit has heard that eyes are windows to the human soul, and Mahito thought that was silly, but the eyes set on him are not the innocent eyes of a child.

Itadori rushes and carefully dodges Mahito’s hands, landing a bone-shattering blow that reverberates through Mahito.

That’s right, Yuji thinks.

Yuji’s soul came from a time where everyone had been taken from him. Not just taken from him…killed before his very eyes in most cases. In an unaltered story, it is his fate to watch every single person he will ever care for be cursed to death. All of them, without exception, without mercy, without hope.

That process begins with this monster, and it never ends until everyone has died.

His friends, his family.

This fusion of old memories and knowledge about himself sorts itself neatly into his mind as he lands his first ever Black Flash—at least, according to this timeline.

Yuji knows this monster has already killed countless people and will continue until he finally dies. So ‘finally’ has to be right now; he has to kill this monster. If he wants to break the cycle, he has to break it now.

No, killing won’t work.

He has to do worse than that.

Is this not the monster who took his family from him? His friends? Kugisaki? Nanami?

In an undisturbed timeline, Mahito and Yuji pushed each other along until Mahito achieved his domain expansion and eventually evolved into his final and most disgusting form in Shibuya. Because in that scenario, they were both ‘young’ and inexperienced with their powers.

Right now, Mahito is getting pounded into the ground by someone with twenty years of intense combat experience who has been transferred to a pristine young body in prime condition.

They are not fighting; Mahito is being tormented by a monster he doesn’t know he helped create. He doesn’t understand why Yuji is able to hurt him, but sometimes he slices him up, sometimes he attacks with his blood, sometimes he just hits him so hard he thinks his soul will simply shatter.

It’s almost like Yuji is under a spell, muttering now and then.

When humans fight curses, they sometimes say absolutely crazy nonsense, but in this case, Mahito is having his skull caved in every three seconds by someone who whispers little things under his breath like ‘never again,’ like they’ve met before.

Every time Mahito reaches out for him, Yuji cuts his hands off, or if that doesn’t work, simply rips them off instead.

One the other side of the resort, Yuta and Nobara are racing down the side of the mountain in pursuit of Hanami, who just got pummeled by Yuji and Aoi Todo a few days before.

Yuta can tell the curse is still weaker than it would be normally.

His first duty is to protect Nobara, but watching her race down the mountain with a hammer, shouting obscenities at a special grade curse who is now full of nails, Yuta wonders if perhaps this young woman does not require his protection. One could argue that there are perhaps those who need to be protected from Nobara, in fact.

Nobara is hurdling down a steep incline in shoes that have a heel, with the strange dexterity of someone who someone who isn’t from the city. Yuta doesn’t know how to explain it, but people from cities run really fast on flat surfaces, and country people seem to be more used to running around on natural terrain.

In that regard, Nobara is not unlike a mountain goat: nimble, fearless, aggressive, and stubborn, always ready to butt heads.

The time they’ve spent together has been unpleasant because of her personality, but he’s learned that the best sorcerers have the worst personalities. Perhaps being courteous is a sign of mediocrity in their kind?

Yuta thinks that Nobara can close the deal on this cursed spirit, so he chases, but he doesn’t interfere, because he thinks it’s what Gojo would do.

This spirit was already weak, and it never had any choice but to flee from them because he was there. These spirits have clearly been warned about who to fight and who to run from, which is interesting.

The only thing that matters is that the further Hanami runs, the more relentless Nobara becomes. It’s trick to try and eliminate her instinct to fight worked briefly on Yuta and even Rika, but it didn’t do anything to Nobara because she’s just that aggressive.

Nobara can practically taste the victory in her mouth as she runs, dodging a barrage of roots and branches. She really didn’t know that she could move like this either, but there are frustrations that have slowly been building. There are three first year students, but if all the sorcerers were asked to name them, she’d bet half of them wouldn’t know her name.

There was Megumi, with his special legendary technique that everyone thought was so important.

Then there was Yuji, with all of his power and all the strange mysteries that had even Gojo interested.

That left her, her, being assigned a bodyguard like she was a fragile baby.

Every day that Yuta had been hanging over her, she felt he was like a dark cloud that reminded her that no one looked at her and saw enough potential for her even to survive.

If Gojo thought so little of her, why had he even helped her get into the school in the first place?

There was a disconnect between the actual Satoru Gojo, who thought she was so precious that he assigned his strongest knight to protect her from having her future cut short by an abomination, and the Satoru Gojo that existed in her mind, who was perhaps disappointed in her, and thought she was so weak that she needed to be guarded.

And so, angry at a figment of her own imagination, she pursues her victory.

She almost runs directly into a stream of lava blasted across path because she can’t stop her momentum.

As Yuta gasps and reaches for her only to find she’s just out of his reach, the lava is repelled toward Jogo by another concussive blast as Souta Gojo joins the fray.

Jogo is dangerous and at full power, and this forces their group to split, with Yuta and Rika moving to split Jogo away from Hanami, leaving Nobara with the old man. It’s violating Gojo’s order, but Jogo can just burn people up. If he keeps Nobara with him and she gets burned, that would be worse than keeping her with him.

Megumi and the other second years converge at Dagon, who is still in womb form, sitting still in the woods where he has been hurled.

“What should we do?” Megumi asks.

Panda says, “This is likely something akin to a special grade curse womb or a curse who has a technique it is reluctant to use. It seems to be willing to not attack us if we do not attack it. Considering the situation, it may be best for us to wait for Gojo before we force the situation to change.”

Maki says, “If we stay, that makes us useless. If we split up and it evolves, then what?”

Inumaki and Megumi have no idea what they should do either. Attacking a curse womb is a gamble. If they assault it and it’s close to being ready to emerge, it’ll do so prematurely and won’t be lacking much of its intended power. If it’s not done establishing its form, it will be easy to defeat and might die from the mere act of having its womb opened.

This is usually done in extremely controlled circumstances if there’s any suspicion that something semi-grade one or above might be inside, and since the other curses in this club are special grades who have advanced intelligence and abilities, acting on the womb might add another major opponent to the battle.

While they consider this, Gojo, still standing in the courtyard, says, “You do have a backup plan, right? You’ll probably let a bunch of curses go and try to flee, but maybe that would distract anyone else, but do you think you can run from me in that body? You could unleash an infinite number of cursed spirits. A million. A billion. I’d still be able to find you.”

Kenjaku answers, “Smug for you to stay here when your students are in trouble.”

Mahito suddenly crashes into the courtyard, bleeding from everywhere, barely able to stand, shocked, confused.

He simply goes flying out the other side when kicked completely through the chest by a feral Yuji.

Kenjaku needs Mahito.

Can’t lose him.

Gojo answers, “I think my little monsters are doing a little better than yours, so I’m not worried.”

Gojo is actually also very surprised both by the fact that Yuji can evidently not only hurt Mahito, but is clearly in the process of killing the curse as he charges through the courtyard with the kind of aura that would make an uninformed observer think he was the villain and Mahito was the victim.

In terms of his cursed energy, Yuji was basically a baby bird in June, but with these odd moments where he would just do stuff without his brain having any idea what his body was doing.

Now, he’s in sync, which means he has remembered how to use his technique.

He can tell Hanami has just about had it on the other side too, and while they can hear fiery explosions, Yuta is where they’re coming from, so it’s all fine.

If his students weren’t strong, he’d have to leave to go save them, an opportunity that Kenjaku was clearly hoping for.

At the very least, he has to escape in Suguru Geto’s body, and he needs Mahito. If he has to eat Mahito now, when he hasn’t realized his potential, that will be so limiting. If Mahito gets clobbered to death by someone who really shouldn’t have that ability at all in the first place, that would be even more limiting. Having to abandon Geto’s body would be even worse.

Kenjaku thought their stalemate was going to put the students in danger and Gojo would have to leave to help them, thus creating an opportunity for him, but that’s not happening. Instead, every second that he uses to come up with a plan is one second closer to the students thinning out one of the special grades, which will lead to them consolidating their forces to pursue the others.

That old man is still somewhere too, capable of rearranging the battlefield if things become unfavorable, if not worse.

He can’t wait anymore. He has to do something, or Yuji Itadori is going to kill Mahito, and that simply can’t happen.

The cursed spirits he had saved up to use in Tokyo? He lets half of them go all at once. This is an act equal to throwing them in the trash despite their astronomically high value. Releasing them in an unpopulated area with a bunch of sorcerers that are currently chewing up special grades even without their strongest member doing anything is stupid.

It’s so stupid.

Kenjaku hates it.

What even was the purpose of this operation? Kenjaku wonders if this whole stupid operation was just Gojo’s way of acting out his fate as the patron saint of misbehaved teenagers, because those girls seem to not be anywhere.

As someone who does stuff like that to other people constantly, it’s insulting. What’s happening to him is the equivalent of someone who only tells knock-knock jokes for a living for one thousand years having his life ruined by someone who is just telling their first knock-knock joke today.

This joke isn’t funny. There’s no nuance. All Gojo’s got going for him is a team of people who swore to laugh for him no matter how bad the joke is, and they’re laughing much, much harder than anyone would have guessed they could.

Yuji Itadori is laughing so hard that Mahito might die.

And Gojo hasn’t even started laughing at his own joke yet, because he is the loudest laugher of all.

When Kenjaku lets the first group of curses out, he orders them to just travel from the center in every direction.

He let the rest go in the direction of Yuji and Mahito and started making his way there, cloaked in a horde of cursed spirits.

South of the ryokan, Yuta cranes his head at the emergence of countless cursed spirits and knows he has to turn away.

Jogo is hurt; Yuta believes he will run if he gets the chance. He’s not in any shape to save Hanami.

If everyone is doing fine right now, the introduction of the spirits, even if they are low grade, will cause distractions. People will make mistakes, and this isn’t a situation where mistakes can be made.

His time limit with Rika is almost over, so he’ll be less equipped to do wholesale curse exorcism once she retires from the battle.

Yuta uses Rika to ascend back to the resort, now being ripped apart by spirits, but sees Nobara as he passes.

Kugisaki is meanwhile frustrated to the point of wanting to explode because despite filling the monster before her with nails and exploding them with cursed energy, it’s still alive and still trying to get away from her, although Hanami’s movement has been significantly impaired.

While she didn’t really know what it did, the way Hanami had her arm covered made Kugisaki concentrate her nails on that area. When she finally activated her technique, the cloth covering it and the flower beneath were both destroyed, and while that seemed significant, she had no idea what would have happened if she hadn’t done that.

She thinks this was a genius move, but there’s no proof.

But she is out of nails.

Angry and disappointed that she couldn’t close on this curse with everything that she had going for her, she wants to scream until she loses her voice.

Souta Gojo stands between her and the curse with two cursed daggers he had hidden in his prosthetic legs. “Why are you frustrated, kid? We can finish this now.”

“I wanted to do it myself.”

“Then do it.”

“I don’t have any more nails.”

The old man says, “Do you think that with all of your power, that should stop you?”

“You don’t get it! I’m out of nails! You have no idea how much I want to exorcise this thing!”

Souta answers, “I can tell that you don’t want to exorcise this curse because it is a curse, or because you hate it specifically. Your negative emotions are focused somewhere else. Killing this curse is about satisfying the negative feelings you have toward other humans, isn’t it? Maybe you feel you have to prove yourself.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The fact that you’re a kid.”

Kugisaki answers, “I’m tired of everyone thinking I’m just leftover. Fushiguro and Itadori are praised, and they get so much damn attention like they’re superstars, and what am I? Just there? Even Gojo thinks I’m weak. He assigned me a bodyguard like I’m some sort of pathetic baby.”

The old man answers, “I was forced to retire by the head of my clan, my brother’s grandson. When I look at him, I think of him as still being a little bratty kid, following me everywhere asking me questions. He looks at me and sees an old man that he needs to take care of. Neither the child in my head nor the decrepit old bastard in his actually exists.”

“You are falling apart, old man.”

Souta glares but answers, “That voices in your head don’t belong to those imaginary people. They belong to you. One of them is telling you how to exorcise this monster. Find it.”

The old man thinks himself a sage, guiding this young sorcerer soul on her journey to discover that anything in the world can become a cursed object if she uses it to curse someone, and that she will use rocks as projectiles to finish the job.

Maybe there was a voice saying all of that wise stuff somewhere in Nobara’s mind, but there was a much louder one telling her she should just beat the curse to death with her hammer since it was so close to death already.

Enlightenment: failed.

The old man watches Nobara exorcise Hanami by beating it to death with a hammer while screaming self-affirmations about how she almost stopped believing in herself, and he decides that he probably needs to leave the teaching to Satoru. He’s not sure if he did a good thing here or not.

The second years and Megumi rush toward the spirits coming from the courtyard, abandoning the curse womb Dagon, which gives Jogo the ability to steal it before rocketing away from the battleground using his cursed energy.

As Jogo speeds across the sky, he tries to calculate who might be able to follow him, but probably only Satoru Gojo could get him, and he didn’t follow.

Escape is a relief, but he can sense that Hanami has fallen to that obnoxious young sorcerer girl who could never have faced such a powerful curse if Hanami hadn’t already been injured.

Since Jogo is unaware of Kenjaku’s true identity and is largely unaware of the human conflicts going on, he considers going back for Mahito, but that requires crossing over Gojo. If he doesn’t go back, he can definitely save Dagon, but if he does, all three of them might die, so he chooses to hope Mahito is able to manage his own situation.

Mahito is not managing his own situation, of course, because he triggered the part of Yuji that is not fifteen years old, has no idea why, and is being pummeled to death while they run around in a sea of cursed spirits that doesn’t seem to distract Yuji at all—he just slashes them out of the way.

Kenjaku is also using the horde of curses to make it to Mahito to consume him and hopefully secure escape, but Gojo is tunnelling through them.

Since Gojo’s domain isn’t particularly useful for spirits who don’t have minds, he cuts through the sea of cursed spirits using Blue. He can tell Yuta is working the perimeter, making sure they don’t leave the area, and that’s fine.

Mahito shrinks himself to the smallest possible size in order to scurry under the cursed spirits, and as he falls to the ground, Yuji spots him and a strange compulsion comes over him.

It’s an idea born from pure hatred, a desire to do something worse than killing Mahito, a fear of what happens in the future, and maybe something deeper that he didn’t even understand.

Yuji catches him out of the air with his mouth and swallows.

Mahito is deeply confused, but obviously he knows he can just expand his shape and tear Yuji apart from the inside. A confusing end to a brutal and confusing battle. But it doesn’t work, and his small form just continues falling until it ends in a massive place.

Expansive.

Much bigger than Yuji’s stomach could ever be.

Landing in a pool of blood, he stands up and looks around. There’s nothing anywhere, in any direction, except a person standing in front of him.

He looks like Yuji, but older, and his body is messed up. The corner of his mouth is scared, and all down his face, and all on one side too.

Mahito looks around. “Am I…is this the inside?”

This older version of Yuji says, “Do you know, Mahito? About me?”

“I’m just really confused about why you keep talking like we know each other, and why the soul inside of this body is clearly older than the actual body.”

Yuji answers, “It’s not for you to understand.”

The curse wonders if he is inside of a domain expansion or if he’s somehow fallen into Yuji’s soul? How does he get out? If he opens his own domain?

It feels like he can’t.

The liquid around his legs starts to burn and bubble, and Mahito asks, “What is this?”

Yuji’s soul answers, “It looks like you all really did forget.”

“Forget what?”

“That this body is a prison,” he says, crossing his arms, “It was meant to restrain a curse far more powerful than you, so you probably aren’t going to last long.”

Mahito asks, “What do you mean I’m not going to last long?”

“Your soul is being digested, dumbass.”

Outside, Yuji’s consciousness has no idea what just happened, but he doesn’t sense Mahito anymore and his rage starts to subside.

Kenjaku can tell Mahito is gone because the curses he sent to swarm him suddenly start dissipating, their instruction suddenly invalid.

Rising above the cursed spirits briefly, he can’t see any more fiery explosions from Jogo or branches crawling above the trees from Hanami, and for a split second, he sees Yuji, who has turned his attention on the smaller curses which can only mean one thing.

He has little hope that a simple curse womb might have survived, and contemplates for one second what he should do next.

Fighting Gojo one-on-one isn’t going to work at this point, and an attempt to simply leave results in Gojo grabbing him by the hair.

“Did I tell you that you can’t run from me in that body?”

Kenjaku is forced to utilize his absolute last resort, the worst possible thing that he would only do if everything else failed and his sole goal was surviving.

He stabs himself in the head with a one-time-use cursed object that transposes two spaces. In this case, it swaps the space in Suguru Geto’s head with the space in a backup body, in this case, Tore Reksten’s.

It is an incredibly rare object, there was only one, he was only ever going to be able to use it one time, and having to do it in this circumstance is infuriating.

Geto’s body falls lifeless and limp as Gojo holds it by the hair.

After activating his technique, Kenjaku awakens in the cottage in Tore Reksten’s body, having been forced to give up his cursed spirit cache, Suguru Geto’s body, the advantage he had over Gojo because he had Geto’s body, Idle Transfiguration, and at least one if not all of his special grades.

Pulling the feeding tube out of Reksten’s nose and removing his IV, Kenjaku takes a few very deep breaths.

Those teenage girls had been to this cottage on a couple of occasions, and if they betrayed him, he was sure that they’d tell the sorcerers about this place, so he hurriedly collects everything he wants to save and then burns the place to the ground.

Perhaps it is a strategic defeat on all sides that significantly weakens him and complicates all of his plans. But he always has a Plan B, C, D, E, F…or in this case a Plan V-engeance, because while he can still use his backup plans to accomplish his goals, he has a new goal.

He doesn’t need Geto’s body to get Gojo into the Prison Realm. Now that he can use Temporal Distortion, he can just bend Gojo’s time so a few seconds seems like a minute.

Kenjaku likes to think he prioritizes his goals and maintains a clear head, but now that he has this body, he can simply amass a toolkit of techniques and kill Gojo and his students, and he will therefore be free to do whatever he wants.

That’s a perfectly logical way to respond to the atrocious nature of the worst knock-knock joke of his very long life, isn’t it?

XXX

The ryokan is predictably destroyed by the time things finally calm down.

The curse cleanup was a chore even for Gojo, who was kind of stunned at the sheer number of curses that Kenjaku was holding. He’s not even sure how many there were, but they taxed Six Eyes to the point he was physically and mentally exhausted by the time they were all gone.

The good news was that they ended up being wasted in the middle of nowhere.

It was a good workout for his students, who had a seemingly endless stream of low-level curses to work against.

They’re all alive, and all doing well, a few scrapes and bruises here and there, but Yuji is a wizard with reverse curse technique.

“The curse womb we found is missing,” Maki says as they gather in the ruined courtyard.

Gojo says, “The curse womb and the volcano head got away when the cursed spirits were released. The nature curse and Patchface both got exorcised, right?”

Kugisaki sits on a broken stone bench and puts her nose up in the air. “I exorcised the tree curse.”

“Really? Excellent work!” Gojo answers as he reaches out to pat her on the head, “I saw you fighting the other curses and could tell that you are on another level. You’re really coming up quickly. Now that you’ve taken out a special grade, you’ve taken the next steps on your journey. I’m proud of you.”

“Now can you let me live without a stupid bodyguard?”

Gojo smirks. “I think you’ve proven yourself. If you keep this up, people are going to need protection from you.”

She doesn’t want to admit that she loves being praised by her teacher, but it does feel pretty good.

Gojo turns to Yuji, “And Patchface?”

Yuji nervously laughs, “About that.”

“What about it?”

“I ate that thing.”

Chapter Text

Ryokun wakes up, still snuggly wrapped up in the arms of Chiyo Gojo.

He’s spent the week being a bit spoiled, eating homecooked meals, singing songs and playing music on whatever instruments he could navigate at his small size, finger painting, playing on the playground, fighting with the babies from the Gojo clan, looking at picture books, and splashing around in the pool.

Ryokun is peaceful for a minute or so, basking in the warmth of a morning snuggle, but then when he rolls over, he sees that man is there again.

Gojo is peacefully asleep, a bit sore from the operation the day before, and minding his own business in his own bed in his own house. Now that he’s discovered he really likes his wife, he warps home every night and finds Ryokun in his bed every night.

When the toddler sits up, he yawns and stretches, considering laying back down in the comfy spot between the grownups, but he doesn’t really like Mr. Gojo just hanging out. He’s jealous for Ms. Chiyo’s attention and wants all the songs and snuggles to himself. Perhaps he would share with Yuji, but not with Mr. Gojo.

Satoru is sleeping with his mouth open and his thick sleeping blindfold, and Ryokun wonders, what can he do?

Put something weird in his mouth? But what?

He decides he’ll crawl out of the bed by making his way to the end, but when he starts to move around, Chiyo mumbles and half-asleep, pulls him close to her again.

It takes some effort to untangle himself without waking her and deciding he can’t get off the bed without waking one of the grownups, he tries to think of what he can do to Gojo.

Ryokun thinks about spitting in his open mouth but thinks Chiyo will get mad at him for that. It’s the kind of bad thing he will get in trouble for, and not a bad thing he can get away with.

Small hands fish around under Satoru’s pillow and find the harmonica the toddler brought to bed.

The toddler puts it directly next to Gojo’s ear, takes the deepest breath possible, and awakens Satoru Gojo to a sound like a dozen demons all screaming into his ear at one single moment.

Rolling off the bed in surprise, Gojo pulls the blindfold off and places a hand over his ringing ear.

Ryokun is sitting up on the bed, holding the harmonica with a grin that is almost demonic.

Chiyo groggily asks, “What was that?”

“That little jerk made a horrible sound.”

In an instant, the toddler changes his affect and innocently says, “I was playing a song for you.”

“That wasn’t a song. It sucked,” Satoru replies, although he wonders why he is arguing with this little vessel of terror.

Chiyo hugs him from behind and says, “Don’t be like that, Satoru. Let this beautiful baby make his music.”

Ryokun turns to grab onto her and cranes his head, looks Gojo in the eyes, and says, “I’m a beautiful baby,” before puffing on the harmonica again.

Gojo rolls his eyes. The moment he argues and accuses this very small person of being a liar and a manipulator, he becomes a man having an argument with a toddler. As Satoru Gojo, the strongest living creature on earth, he feels this is below him.

Satisfied with his victory, Ryokun turns back to Chiyo. “Can we do a song?”

“Of course we can.”

“But just you and me. Not him.”

Satoru doesn’t even know the words to the children’s song they start singing, but he looks them up on his phone and starts singing loudly, which makes Ryokun yell more loudly, until they are just yelling the words at each other while Gojo’s wife plays the guitar on the bed.

The fact that this is all happening at 5:51 am leaves Chiyo a little unamused. “I guess it’s time to go down and get started on breakfast since I have two children to feed.”

There’s a lot going on in the Jujutsu Society right now, but as Gojo spends a few hours that morning at home, he starts to ponder all sorts of things going on in his life.

There’s a room where the door has been closed, and he slides it open and finds a nursery almost ready for a baby.

A blue and white wonderland with little gold accents here and there, it’s very princessy to him. It’s hard to imagine that there’s going to be a whole new person in their family soon.

There’s a big harp in one corner, and he drags his fingers across the strings.

How extravagant, he thinks, to be born a sorcerer princess who naps to the sound of a harp.

Satoru hopes the baby can have this life and not the one that Yuji sees in his visions.

The more he starts to make room in his heart for the baby, the more his heart hurts at the idea that she might have a difficult and short life spent carrying the same burdens that he does.

There’s a big soft rug in the middle of the room, and he lays down on his back just to think about all of it, wincing a little at his sore back.

He hears the literal pitter-patter of feet in the hallway, and Ryokun enters the nursery.

“Hey, little man, come here.”

Ryokun is holding his orange kitty stuffie and discovers the grownup is fully on the floor, his territory.

Satoru rolls over and says, “I need you to do me a favor. Can you stand on my back?”

“Yea.”

There are no questions about why he would want this or if it’s okay to do; he just walks over and steps onto Gojo’s back after giving him the toy to hold. Gojo rests his head on the cat stuffy and sighs in relief at the pressure.

“Okay, now walk around.”

Ryokun holds onto the crib rail as he steps all over Gojo’s back.

“A little more. Stomp a little.”

The child is perplexed that he’s been given permission to stomp on this adult, because he can’t imagine the wear and tear a life of sorcery combined with tall stature and occasional bad posture have on the back of a grownup.

Ryokun enjoys his duty so much that he abruptly jumps as high as he is able at his clumsy little age and lands on the lumbar region of Gojo’s back, causing an incredibly loud CRACK to resonate through the room.

He sits on Gojo’s back and asks, “You okay?”

“Very okay. Thank you! You cured me!”

He feels little hands easing into one of his pockets, the one where he typically has a few pieces of candy, and Ryokun takes out a soft caramel.

“Can I have?”

“Of course. You’re way cheaper than a professional masseuse.”

“What’s moosoosoo?”

“It’s basically a person whose job is giving backrubs.”

“Am I moosoosoo?”

“Yes, the best moosoosoo ever.”

Gojo thinks this kid is quite cute when he wants to be, and while Ryokun sits on Gojo’s back and eats all the candy out of his pocket, Satoru contemplates what it’s going to be like when the baby comes.

“Do you know what this room is?”

“Baby’s room.”

“That’s right. There’s going to be a baby in our family soon. What do you think about that?”

Ryokun has lots of opinions about everything, so he asks, “You be the Daddy?”

“That’s right. You think I’ll be a good Daddy?”

“Yea. You have candy.”

Gojo finds this child’s thoughtful determination that he will be a good father because he has a candy pocket to be quite funny, and he wonders if their baby will be like this too, possessing a mind filled with delightful absurdities.

Since Gojo is in reach, the toddler pets his undercut because he’s curious about what it feels like, and then after a rather lengthy conversation about all the various things on Ryokun’s mind, Satoru considers who this kid actually might be.

Ryokun remains a very puzzling character in the overall story.

They know Yuji’s soul came from the future; that seems like a reasonable assumption that has been proven likely correct.

But what about this little guy? Where did he come from?

Just to try his luck, Gojo flips through his phone in a folder of various things on the evidence board he works on with Yuji.

He shows Ryokun a picture of Tore Reksten, and the boy stares at the photo for a while.

“Do you know his name?”

“Imbecile.”

This child occasionally using extremely proper and ancient words is one of the oddest things about him. This specific ancient world, with its correct kanji, implies the person is not only foolish, but that this foolishness causes them harm.

The fact that Ryokun knows Tore Reksten’s face is interesting, and implies that he played some sort of role in the future that Yuji came from, even though Yuji has never seen him in a vision. Gojo wonders if he stumbled into similar misfortune in this other future and became possessed by Kenjaku then too.

“Is this Kenjaku?”

“Who?”

He flips to a sketch of Alghera, or as well as he could make one according to Yuji’s description.

Ryokun frowns as he stares at the phone.

His mouth stumbles on the name three times because it doesn’t flow particularly well off a tongue that has only spoken syllabic Japanese.

“Alghera. The monster! She hurt Blueberry!”

“Blueberry?”

“Took her head off!”

Gojo realizes that Ryokun has recalled an actual memory, or something like a memory, or maybe a vision like Yuji has, and it’s of a human decapitation.

He starts crying hysterically, half-screaming, half sobbing, although Gojo can’t tell if it’s because he’s sad about ‘Blueberry’ or if it’s because he’s scared of the monster. He’s not sure if Ryokun understands what it means, but he clearly has a graphic image of this monster removing someone’s head from their body.

The Six Eyes user Yuji saw in his vision died by decapitation.

Blueberry was not too odd a nickname for someone with very blue eyes.

Ryokun was originally supposed to go back with Yuji today, but his situation is complicated. Now that they know that his attempted kidnaper was definitely a thousand-year-old curse user who is famous for doing absolutely fucked stuff to babies and small children and setting complex traps, Ryokun can’t just be out in the world.

The kid probably isn’t going to be safe while Kenjaku is alive.

They could keep him at the Tokyo campus under constant guard, but he’s still a little kid. There’s no playground there or kids for him to play with. It’s probably safest for him to stay where he is, but he assumes the higher ups are going to bitch about it because they don’t want him to become another Megumi Fushiguro.

They’re more concerned with the politics than Ryokun’s wellbeing, which is precisely why they shouldn’t be allowed to make choices about his fate in the first place.

It’s the same problem that affects the students, except Ryokun is extremely vulnerable.

Once Ryokun calms down, Gojo helps him blow his nose which he evidently can’t do unless someone else holds the tissue and coaches him.

“You make a lot of snot for a little dude.”

“I’m scared of the monster,” he says, pulling on Gojo’s pants.

Gojo answers, “Don’t worry. The monster isn’t real. It can’t hurt you.”

After talking with his wife and calling Yuji, they decide it’s best to keep Ryokun there for the time being, although Gojo wonders if that’s really enough.

Tengen said the attempted kidnapping, which deviated from other carefully-laid plans, indicates that Kenjaku really wants Ryokun, and that if Kenjaku really wants to do something, he’ll find a way to do it. It’s only a matter of time and circumstance. She also said that Ryokun is similar to a lightning rod in that he presents a hazard to those around him, but on the other hand, they know lightning will probably strike that exact spot.

Keeping Ryokun around his wife and unborn child and clan probably endangers them, but Gojo thinks Kenjaku will be more hesitant to strike the Gojo estate than either of the locations because Kotaru the demon tree presents a plethora of strategic disadvantages.

It might be possible to sneak onto one of the campuses using sophisticated enough concealment, but Kotaru is a living thing that is ever-present and aware. The instant a hostile slips over the fence, no matter what they do to hide themselves, Kotaru will wake up.

Kotaru waking up is a big deal, and he’s very noisy and causes the earth to shake when he moves his roots around. Since the Kyoto campus is immediately adjacent to the Gojo clan estate, if Kotaru awakens, the Jujutsu Society will immediately be aware.

It’s a lot to think about, and ultimately, Gojo doesn’t have a better plan.

He goes out to the cemetery before he heads to work, to the grave for Suguru Geto that now contains the right remains.

He doesn’t have the bandwidth to have emotions about this right now, so he postpones his grief.

When he warps to Tokyo, it’s to meetings about what happened.

He passes Yuji in the hallway, coming out of the Council of Elders.

Yuji has never had to talk to the ‘higher-ups’ directly like that before, and he felt quite intimidated by it. They wanted to know everything about everything, and Yuji was honest about the fact that he knew the operation at the ryokan wasn’t sanctioned by the Jujutsu Society.

They were flabbergasted that he understood that Gojo’s primary goal was to save two girls who were already murderers, and he is flabbergasted that it surprises them that he would do that.

Nobara told him she’d had this grand realization that the way she sees a person in her mind isn’t actually the person, but just a version of them that she made up according to herself. This is kind of a lot to take in, but she pointed out that this is true for everyone. Understanding someone is just the process of making that imaginary person a little more accurate, although it’s impossible to ever fully know another person.

She said there’s a version of Yuji Itadori in the minds of all the people who know him, and if they all came to life, all of them would be different and none of them would be him.

Yuji can’t help but think that the Satoru Gojo that the elders believe in isn’t like the real Gojo, or maybe that’s what they hate about him.

Maybe Mimiko and Nanako Hasaba are rude, wild, did horrible things, whatever, but now that Yuji has learned about their lives, he’s glad that they were helped.

The Council of Elders secondarily wanted to interrogate him about his relationship with the Gojo clan and why Ryokun was staying at their clan estate despite the fact that the Elders didn’t approve this arrangement.

Yuji stood up to them and told them that he would do whatever was best for his family no matter what it was, and perhaps because he ate a special grade curse and had nothing to show for it but some heartburn, they didn’t press him further even though this caused audible anger in their voices.

This discussion with them causes Yuji to realize that the people who are in charge of them don’t care about the fact that they are human beings or that they’re going through human experiences.

Ryokun could have been killed during his attempted kidnapping, but he’s safe, healthy, and doing well in a safe place and none of that matters to them. What they care about is the politics and the power that he might have someday.

Mimiko and Nanako were abused as little girls, and even though Suguru Geto did everything he did, he lovingly raised them. When he died, they had to face the reality that his body had been stolen and out of some very sadly misplaced hope, they stayed with a monster hoping maybe Geto could come back to them someday.

It’s the saddest thing, really?

Yuji knows those girls participated in the attempted kidnapping, and they did put Ryokun’s life in danger, but those were the lengths they were willing to go to because they thought they could have their dad back and be with the only person who had ever loved them.

Gojo choosing to help them above everything else is the compassionate, merciful, and human thing to do.

To him, even though sorcerers go through scary stuff and it seems like the whole world is trying to break them down until they don’t feel human anymore, they have one person who is always telling them without words to never give up on their own humanity, on their human hearts, on their hope and compassion and the things that are important to them.

That probably seemed really sappy to someone living out in the world, but to young sorcerers, it almost feels like the world is trying to erode their humanity away, bit by bit.

The Elders don’t understand any of that, or maybe they do, and they don’t believe that Yuji should be allowed to be a human being and make human decisions for himself, for his friends, for his little brother, for others too.

As Yuji begins to understand his own power more, and the power of others, he is struck both by how precious human life actually is and how urgently it has to be defended.

Ryokun is this huge person living in this tiny body, filled with love and hope. He is fragile, in his body, in his mind, in his spirit. It takes so little to break his heart or disappoint him, and despite his surprising recklessness, he gets injured easily. It would take so little for him to die.

Yuji didn’t want to be tasked with taking care of a child when he met Ryokun and at that moment, it would have been so easy to just deny him and let fate chart whatever course it would for him. He assumed someone would probably have taken him in. After all, he’s very valuable.

But Ryokun is precious, and he is part of Yuji’s heart now and Yuji can’t imagine not getting to see this mischievous little human grow up. He is a part of Yuji, and Yuji is a part of him, and they’re all just…being human together, souls drifting through a world that’s kind of scary sometimes, but it’s better because they have each other.

His future self, ultimately, lost everyone, and so instinctively, he wants to do everything he can to protect and care for as many people as possible.

The deepest parts of him feel so much joy just being able to see Nanami pass by in the hall.

Yuji feels resentment toward the Elders when he leaves and as Gojo passes him in the hallway, on his way to probably be lectured and punished or threatened or whatever.

He regroups with the others, who are feeling similar anger and frustration toward the leadership for criticizing their actions.

Panda reminds him that this isn’t a regular school. They can’t just expel the students for misbehaving. Between their age and Gojo’s, there are very few powerful sorcerers, and the higher-ups already alienated the ones who would be third years. With special grades and an ancient curse user on the prowl, the Elders can’t exactly punish all of them. One student, maybe, but this operation was all the first and second years in Tokyo, the most powerful clan, and the most powerful sorcerer.

“As much as they hate what happened and as mad about it as they are, they can’t really do much to us. We’re too valuable. When a sorcerer is forced outside of the Jujutsu Society, it not only means that they can’t rely on the sorcerer’s strength, but it also increases the chances that sorcerer will turn against the Jujutsu Society.”

Yuji trusts Panda’s opinion, but he is still really unhappy about everything, and he’s worried about Ryokun.

There’s just no escaping from the fact that the scariest guy in Japan wants to take him, and Yuji doesn’t even know what to do. He is grateful to Gojo and his wife for continuing to extend their hospitality to him, but as far as Yuji knows, Gojo’s wife is pregnant he doesn’t want to endanger someone else’s child.

Back in their dorm, the poster is still stuck up on the wall with Ryokun’s little golden apple stickers.

One more and he was supposed to get a kitty. He’d been doing his best, and while his best wasn’t actually very good, Yuji could tell that he was really trying to do better and make Yuji happy.

Their little life was happy.

Yuji had gotten used to having Ryokun around. He wanted to hear his voice and talk to him about everything and have meals together with him in the cafeteria and hear about all his daycare drama.

Apparently, the only way they can get back to that is to take down a thousand-year-old criminal who has evaded centuries of Jujutsu Society sorcerers.

Yuji wonders if exorcising Mahito meant that Kugisaki and Nanami would get to survive now? In the back of his mind, he’s afraid that people are assigned a day to die and nothing they do will matter.

Will Yuko get to stay with him, if Mahito is gone?

What about those little pink-haired babies?

The part of Yuji that is still very fifteen blushes every time he thinks of Yuko as being the future mother of his children, and yet his mind comes back to the idea because the part of him that is not fifteen finds the idea so comforting.

Even though things in his life are kind of chaotic, texting with her calms him down and reminds him that everything can probably be okay if he’s brave and if they are able to prevent the other future.

After Gojo gets out of his meetings, Yuji meets him in their secret room in Gojo’s apartment, where all their clues are.

Gojo writes a word on a piece of paper and sticks it onto a sketch. “Her name is Alghera.”

“The big bad?”

“Mhmm.”

Gojo says, “I learned by asking Ryokun, who had an episode and started crying when he remembered her. Sorry about that—I didn’t realize he’d respond so poorly, and didn’t think there was much of a chance we’d get lucky. But he remembered something more than her name.”

“What did he remember?”

“That Alghera hurt a mysterious person named Blueberry.”

Yuji says, “Ryokun seems to go back to talking about Blueberry. Keep in mind that he has imaginary friends that include a giraffe and a four-armed giant.”

Gojo answers, “I think that Blueberry is the other Six Eyes user. Ryokun remembers seeing her have her head removed by Alghera. That’s how the Six Eyes user dies, and Blueberry isn’t a nonsensical nickname for someone with blue eyes.

“He also knows Reksten’s face, but it was like when we showed him the sketch of the pigtailed sorcerer and he kept insisting his name was ‘Trash.’”

Yuji and Gojo tentatively assume the other Six Eyes user is probably the baby Gojo is expecting, and if Ryokun knew her and saw her die, it would be proof that he was definitely from the future.

There is an amount of evidence piling up that Ryokun possesses a lot of information he would not have if he was actually a toddler in the future.

He’s identified by sight half of the sorcerers at the Jujutsu Society, as well as a bunch of enemies including Mahito, Alghera, Reksten, and Kenjaku.

Yuji says, “It seems like he was there, doesn’t it?”

Gojo answers, “It really does. But I can’t imagine he could have participated in those events as a toddler. He knows the bad guys by sight. Remembers their names when he sees their faces. Feels apparent disgust at some of them. If he saw the other Six Eyes user get her head ripped off by Alghera, that means he was at the Later Shinjuku Event.”

The problem with this is that Yuji has dozens of snapshots of Later Shinjuku and everyone else appears multiple times.

Yuji says, “I haven’t seen Ryokun in any of my visions.”

“What if you’ve seen Ryokun and he just looks like something else? Maybe he also traveled through time with you and somehow his form got distorted or substituted with yours somehow.”

The teenager shrugs. “I don’t think that’s it. Sometimes I feel like…maybe Ryokun is a part of me?”

“A part of you?”

“I don’t know how to describe it, but I feel like there are things that I am not allowed to remember. Sometimes when I’m with Ryokun, I get this impression that I’ve known him for a very long time. It’s all very confusing. I’ve never seen him in any of my visions, and yet it is increasingly clear that he was there for all of it somehow. But obviously, we can’t stand around and pretend that as a baby, he was just around when all this was happening.”

It's such an odd mystery; Yuji traveling back in time to prevent the apocalypse makes sense, but why send a child? The idea that Ryokun probably wasn’t a child before arriving in their time perhaps explains some things, but if he was really an adult in a child’s body, there would be signs.

Ryokun is a baby to his core with a few little moments where he’s maybe just peculiar.

Yet the kid knows the players even if he doesn’t remember the game, and that’s probably only possible if he was a player himself.

Yuji’s accounts of Later Shinjuku seem to suggest that he was perhaps the sole survivor of the battle, and they basically know that Shoko is perhaps the only other sorcerer they know that is still alive after Later Shinjuku.

Yuta’s fate is still unknown, but he appears at the Earlier Shinjuku event. By Later Shinjuku, Megumi is seen controlling Rika as a shadow, and the only plausible explanation for that is that Yuta dies somewhere in the middle.

There are young people at the Later Shinjuku event that are not known to them because they probably haven’t been born or are currently small children out in the world, like the other Six Eyes user, a kid who looks like Megumi and may have an evolved variant of Ten Shadows, and a handful of others.

The identity of this Megumi lookalike has been the point of some discussion. Both in terms of his looks and the similarity of his technique to Ten Shadows, he appears to be descended from the Zenin clan, but they don’t know who he is. On the board, his name is simply Shadows, and he and Yuji quietly speculate about his identity.

When Yuji first started sorting through his visions of Later Shinjuku, they discussed the possibility that Shadows might be Megumi’s son and they both die in battle together, but if the other Six Eyes user is Gojo’s daughter that will be born around the new year, Shadows is probably going to arrive in the world soon too.

It doesn’t seem plausible that Megumi might become a parent in the next year or so.

Gojo has considered the possibility that in the other timeline, his wife was forced to marry Naoya Zenin and Shadows might be her kid. The idea makes him feel kind of sour, but based on when the kid would need to be born and all the ages of the Zenin clan members, Naoya seems like the person most likely to spawn in the near future.

Yuji in some ways finds the investigation of his fragmented look into the future to be incredibly frustrating, because he’s sure there’s so much that he’s supposed to know.

Actually, everything is frustrating.

Yuji feels fortunate that maybe he can help everyone not see the dark future, but the fact that he has seen it, even in bits and pieces, weighs on him so heavily.

When confronted by Gojo, Kenjaku didn’t deny that ‘most sorcerers dying’ was on Kenjaku’s to-do list, but Yuji and Gojo don’t realize that Kenjaku plans for them all to be killed during the execution of the Culling Game, and what Yuji actually sees is all of them dying at the hands of Alghera, an accidental outcome of the Culling Game.

As Sukuna watches his reincarnation from the spirit world, he is not particularly concerned with what’s going on in the mortal world.

He has two reasons for this:

First, the easiest way to avoid Alghera’s birth is for Kenjaku to find out about her at any point before she is born. Evolving cursed spirits is the exact opposite of what Kenjaku is trying to do, and if Yuji and Kenjaku just had one single honest conversation, Kenjaku would realize his experiment is going to result in sorcerers becoming ‘lesser beings’ to curses.

Kenjaku will either adjust his experiment, or not do it at all.

That is all it will take.

People can die, and the Culling Games and other catastrophes can still happen, but if Kenjaku finds out about Alghera at any point before December 24, Alghera will never exist.

The second reason is that there is a very clear barrier to Alghera being born in the same form and with the same powers.

The requirement for Alghera to spawn with the anti-infinity barrier, is that not only does Satoru Gojo have to die, but he has to have a reason to create an anti-infinity barrier in the first place. Since that technique was an answer to Sukuna evolving the World Cutting slash, there’s no reason for him to create it if there’s no Sukuna.

And more importantly, without Sukuna there, the possibility that Gojo will actually die is astronomically small in the first place. If Gojo doesn’t die, the power necessary to cause Alghera’s birth probably won’t exist, and even if she is born, she won’t have her cheat armor.

Sukuna believes that his mere removal from the events will prevent Alghera from destroying the world. Despite being convinced that his absence will prevent the apocalypse from happening, he remains unwilling even in the afterlife to admit that he was part of the problem.

Unfortunately for the sorcerers, none of this is known to anyone in the mortal world.

Yuji is left with his apocalyptic visions, Gojo is trying to scheme a way out of them, and Kenjaku is quietly trying to figure out how he got busted.

A few weeks pass, and October arrives with slightly chillier weather.

Behind the scenes, tension between the Elders and Gojo continues to escalate, to the point that they’re left with the reality that they will have to acknowledge Gojo’s vision for the future or he will remove them from it. The ryokan incident was a watershed moment, where the two sides have to find some way past the fact that Gojo ignored the existence of the Jujutsu Society in its entirety and went off on his own on a mission that expansive.

In that chamber, Gojo and the Elders ponder how they can live with each other. Gojo doesn’t want to kill them until the moment where they don’t give him any other choice, but he also feels like this conflict is weighing the Jujutsu Society down, maybe sinking it toward the dark abyss that Yuji sees.

The Elders don’t want to mess too much with Gojo because even if they had a button to launch Satoru Gojo into the sun, he had three kids under the age of seventeen that could slay a special grade. His vision had already passed on to them, and even if he was gone, they would still be there.

But, they joke even in his presence, it would be nice to have a button like that.

The showdown at the ryokan forces action; if they don’t do something about Gojo, they’ll seem weak and pointless. If they attempt to do what they want with Satoru Gojo, he’ll splash them all over the walls, which would also ironically also make them seem weak and pointless.

How can they contain him?

In historic times, the Jujutsu Society was headquartered in Kyoto. The Kyoto campus is actually immediately next to the Gojo clan estate since Michizane Sugawara helped Tengen create it. The only thing separating them is a wall that the Gojos will rudely call the Jujutsu Society’s umbilical cord, a thin line that separates mother from child.

Moving headquarters, Tengen, and many operations to Tokyo over the past century wasn’t really just about adjusting to the changing population. It was also about trying to curb the Gojo clan’s seemingly endless political interference in everything.

At age fifteen, Gojo was sent to Tokyo by his meddling grandfather to set up roots and spread like cancer, a job very well done. They had to adapt to the strongest Gojo presence being there instead of Kyoto, thus causing the Kyoto campus to become more anti-Gojo.

They discuss if they can offer Gojo some sort of consolation to make him leave Tokyo because the button to launch him into the sun continues to not manifest for them despite their most fervent wishes.

But eventually, they make Gojo an offer and he decides to accept.

The Tokyo students all receive a text on October 10 at eight in the morning telling them that they’ve been transferred to the Kyoto campus effective immediately, and at first, Yuji is left wondering if maybe they really did fire Gojo.

Yuji goes to Gojo’s apartment to check on the secret basement room, only to find that all the investigation stuff has been moved and there are boxes of manga spilled all over the place instead.

The students are all confused about what is going on, but when Yuji texts Gojo, he tells him that everything is fine and that he’ll be waiting for them in Kyoto.

After packing his and Ryokun’s things in boxes that were brought by an assistant, he carefully writes his name on each in a marker so it will be delivered to the right place.

With an overnight bag and a plethora of questions, he meets up with the other students, and they take the train to Kyoto, where assistants pick them up and take them to the campus.

They are greeted by Satoru Gojo, who is waiting for them on the steps to give them a tour.

Yuji realizes right away that he can see Kotaru, the Gojo clan’s demon tree, very clearly, and had no idea the Gojo clan estate and the Kyoto campus were immediately next to each other.

The Kyoto campus is much older, and in many ways, more interesting. There are all kinds of places to explore and things to look at. At the end of the tour, Gojo takes them to the dorms, where the Kyoto group is really quite chilly about having the schools combined.

Yuji doesn’t have a room in the dorms, and while everyone else is settling in, the two head next door, where Gojo shows him into an apartment that’s part of the sprawling main residence of the Gojo clan.

“You’re an ally of our clan, so this isn’t weird or anything,” Gojo answers as he slides the door open.

It’s nice; there are two bedrooms, a big living area, and a proper kitchen and bath. There’s already furniture and necessities set up, and Yuji looks around and says, “This is really nice. A lot bigger than our room back in Tokyo.”

Gojo answers, “After having that little guy running around in my house, I realize it’s probably no good to try to keep him in a single room. He needs to be able to run around. Plus, we’re right across the tea garden. Chiyo and the aunties of the clan will keep watching him while you work and go to class. Plus, I heard you promised him a cat.”

Gojo holds out a golden apple sticker.

“How’d you get this?”

“I thought about enrolling Ijichi in daycare to see if he can behave himself and earn it, but instead he just went there and asked if he could have it.”

Yuji asks, “Are the higher ups going to have a problem with this?”

Gojo answers, “Yuji, the thing about the higher ups is that people who live to be old sorcerers are either crazy as all hell like my great uncle or they’re cowards. You can tell the difference if you look at them. All the old men in that room have all their limbs, they’re not covered in scars. People who spent their lives amassing political power instead of realizing their own potential as sorcerers aren’t going to do anything to you. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because they are afraid you will eat them. Being dangerous is very powerful in our community.”

Yuji thinks it’s odd that someone like Gojo, the most powerful human being on earth, would be interested in Ryokun’s dream of earning enough golden apple stickers to get a cat as a reward, but Gojo is also just a human doing human things out in the world.

They go on to Gojo’s wing of the estate, which is just a short walk across a tiny tea garden from the apartment, and Ryokun practically tackles him at the door because he hasn’t been by in almost a week.

After Yuji helps pack up Ryokun’s things, they make the very short walk to their new place and spend the evening alone together for the first time in a really long time.

Even though he’s been spoiled to death by Gojo’s wife for weeks, Ryokun is so excited to be back alone with Yuji in their new little home.

It’s another change and so much change probably isn’t good for him, but he’s a tough kid.

Sometimes Yuji forgets that he really only met this kid in June and even though the blood tests say otherwise, he doesn’t think they’re actually related.

Yet, he’s family.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, they’re bros.

If Ryokun really came from that dark future, Yuji is glad that they made this journey together somehow, and that he’ll get to live a better life.

And, he’s glad that they’re together.

Yuji is somehow acutely aware of the fact that every time he turns around, Ryokun is a little bit bigger than the last time he noticed. Even in the short time they’ve been together, his mental abilities are quickly sharpening. He’s learning more and more about himself, the world, and other people. He expresses himself better, and his tantrums are a little less intense than at first.

He knows more numbers, a few hiragana, all his basic colors, and tons of animals; he is getting  better about please and thank you, and now and then, he’ll even apologize without being forced.

Chiyo helped him memorize Yuji’s phone number, and taught him how to write his name, which he does in a way that’s not really legible, but the effort is there. He even brushes his teeth well on his own, he’s doing better dressing himself, and he can navigate zippers and Velcro his shoes.

Ryokun is increasingly interested in Yuji as a person too.

What’s his favorite color? Favorite song? Favorite thing to eat? Has he gotten any hugs from Yuko lately?

Since Yuko lives in Tokyo and Yuji and Ryokun are now in Kyoto, the logistics of that relationship have become more difficult, but Yuji texts Yuko approximately two hundred times her day, so it’s fine.

While Ryokun is working on his Big Cats Coloring Book after a simple dinner Yuji whipped up for them, Yuko calls to Facetime him while he sits on the sofa and not even two minutes into the call, Ryokun climbs over the back of the sofa onto Yuji’s head and inserts himself into the conversation.

Ryokun needs to know how she’s been doing, if she wants to see him play his harmonica or his little drums—he can do both at the same time, by the way, if she likes tigers or lions more, if she knows how to make fish with crispy skins, if she wants to hear a joke he learned, all while wrestling with Yuji, who is trying to remove him from his head while still holding the phone.

What Yuko sees is two happy pink-haired boys having a little moment.

It’s cute.

“You should get married with Yuji,” Ryokun suggests.

Yuko blushes a little. “You think so?”

“Yea! Then you can be with us! Like Mr. Gojo and Ms. Chiyo.”

Yuji is embarrassed and lifts Ryokun up with one hand on his belly. “Sorry! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“I do too! When you get married with someone, you become a mommy and daddy.”

Yuji cringes—ah yes, the facts of life from a toddler.

Taking a deep breath, Yuji looks up at Ryokun as he is suspended above him and says, “You’re really a very jealous little dude. I think if we did marry and had a baby, you’d be mad as hell. Just imagine, me and Yuko, paying attention to Baby.”

Ryokun’s limbs suddenly go limp as he considers this, and he says, “I’m Baby.”

Yuko can’t help but laugh, even though she’d wanted to have a private conversation with Yuji.

Ryokun rocks his body to slide of Yuji’s hand and lands his feet directly on top of Yuji’s head. Then, he lunges forward, grabbing the phone as he tumbles forward, onto a coffee table and then the floor.

Both of them freeze for a minute because it seems like this must have resulted in some sort of injury. Ryokun hit the coffee table and then the floor, after all, but the toddler waits a few second and nothing hurts. Emboldened, he sprints down the hall toward the bedroom. Yuji chases, and Yuko sees the camera jumping around until Ryokun slides under the bed.

Ryokun whispers, “He can’t get me under here, he’s too big.”

Yuji’s hand grabs him by one ankle, and he squeals as he’s dragged out from under the bed.

The teenager holds him upside down by one foot with one hand and takes the phone with the other, and he hears Yuko laughing.

“Sorry about that.”

Ryokun yells as he flails upside down, “Put me down!”

“Are you going to be good?”

“No! Badder!”

Yuji says, “Let me call you back after I get the monster to bed.”

Ryokun is in a mood and wants to play wrestle, which is fine with Yuji since at some point, he’ll reach zero percent on his internal battery and just fall asleep.

A bath and some wrestling wear him out as expected, and Yuji tucks Ryokun in before retiring to his own room to call Yuko back.

She’s wearing pajamas with thin straps when he calls back and he can see her shoulders and arms, and this leaves him with the strange compulsion to bite. Not hard. Just lightly press his teeth in.

She looks so warm.

Her voice makes him feel a certain way too.

They spend an hour on the phone before his door slides open, and a drowsy Ryokun climbs onto Yuji’s bed and snuggles in.

After less than fifteen seconds, he says, “I can’t sleep cause you’re talking.”

Yuji answers, “You got out of your bed, came in here, got in my bed, and now you’re complaining?”

“Yea.”

“Go back to your own bed.”

“I wanna be with you, Yuji.”

When he was apart from Ryokun, he missed him constantly, but now they’re back together, he is reminded that this precious little soul is also kind of a pain in the ass.

Oh well, Yuji decides, Ryokun is his pain in the ass, and nothing feels right when he’s not around.

The boys tell Yuko goodnight and go to sleep.

When morning comes, he leaves Ryokun with Chiyo in the morning after breakfast, and then heads to class.

Gojo is in a visibly good mood both because he scored a political victory and because the little goaltender that was keeping him from scoring was no longer on duty at his house. He had the best, most wholesome marital evening ever, with the kind of sex that could properly be called lovemaking, and snuggling, and positive discussions about their upcoming baby, and he just felt like a very happy and good boy.

The second years got into a fight at six in the morning and knocked down one of the first floor walls at the dorm, but that wasn’t his problem. He decided to leave that to Gakuganji or Yaga—despite being one of three ‘leaders’ at the school, Gojo had no intention of doing too many administrative duties.

The kids would work it out.

Noritoshi Kamo told the students before class that the Elders had given Gojo basic control over all the students in exchange for him moving them away from Tokyo. It’s a compromise designed to give Gojo what he wants and keep him close to home, which in theory will result in him meddling in other things less.

The other clans are upset about the agreement because of the power teachers have over the students, but the Elders are just tired of Gojo and have accepted that if they just let him have the kids, he’ll grow dragonslayers for them.

Yuji had a very busy first day in Kyoto, first going to class, and then going home in the afternoon to unpack his and Ryokun’s things after they were delivered. He saw Ryokun playing in the garden with the little Gojo kids under the watchful eye of the clan aunties and decided it would be easier to do the work before reclaiming the kid.

Since sorcery has a remarkably high fatality rate, widows are one of the Gojo clan’s most underrated and valuable resources, doing all sorts of work. There are women that look after the little ones who married into the Gojo clan in their twenties, were widowed by thirty, and are now sixty, having lived most of their lives as widows within a family they married into.

He finds out Souta Gojo lives in the apartment next to theirs, and when Yuji realizes they were probably way too loud the night before, the old man told him to let Ryokun make as much noise as he wanted, that he didn’t mind being reminded that there are young people in the world who are having a good time.

Yuji mentions that he is about to go into town, and the old man offers to drive, at which point Yuji realizes maybe every Gojo is a hazard behind the wheel.

As he speeds down the road, he tells Yuji how he tried to teach Nobara how to use her technique in a broader and more meaningful way and even though she seemed to have understood, she went after Hanami with her hammer instead.

It’s funny to Yuji, because when he heard this exact same story from Nobara, she spoke of the old man like he was a wise sage guiding her on a journey of self-realization that she could accomplish great things if she was more direct with her attacks.

But Souta tells it like Nobara is a madwoman who has realized that a truly mad person with a hammer would not require nails in order to be dangerous.

They make two stops, and Yuji returns to his apartment, sneaking around a bit to make sure Ryokun doesn’t see him.

Once he’s ready, he collects his child from the garden and Ryokun holds onto his hand and tells him all about his day as they navigate the stone paths back to the apartment.

Inside, the cat poster for their grand project has been hung up on the wall and Yuji presents Ryokun with the last golden apple sticker.

“I know you’ve been really brave and good all this time, so you’ve earned it.”

The boy looks up at the poster, and when Yuji lifts him up, he puts the sticker on the poster.

Ryokun is clearly incredibly proud of himself and is cheering and jumping around when Yuji opens the bathroom door.

A big ball of orange and white fur walks out.

Yuji says, “This is Mikan. He’s three years old, like you.”

Mikan is the chilliest of cats, and when Ryokun screams and runs over to embrace him, he just lays down on top of the boy and starts licking his hair and purring. Mikan is an absolutely enormous adult cat, not at all the kitten Yuji thought he would bring home, but he has a good personality.

Ryokun is practically weeping from joy when he says, “Mikan, I love you more than anyone in the world!”

Yuji asks, “…really?”

The toddler has a lot in common with a cat: he’s a mischievous bed intruder that alternates between naptime and running around like he’s possessed. He loves food and attention if he’s in the mood for it. He purposefully ignores anything that doesn’t interest him and gives laser focus to the things that do. He is food motivated, unpredictable, petty, enjoys climbing, and requires a lot of play time.

Both the cat and Ryokun primarily occupy the floor and places they must climb to, so they even share the same domain.

Ryokun speaks to Mikan like he is actually a person, and is even polite, saying ‘excuse me’ when the cat walks in front of him, something that he will usually refuse to do with other humans.

He introduces Mikan to his toys, to Gany, the cat stuffy that has gone everywhere with him since his first night, and Mikan sticks with him because Ryokun pets him nicely and talks to him.

Yuji was worried he’d have to show Ryokun not to pull Mikan’s fur or be rough with him, but he can tell right away that the toddler understands how to treat his new friend well. Yuji suspects that Mikan likewise understands that Ryokun is a baby human.

At bedtime, Mikan jumps up on the bed to sleep with his new human friend, and Yuji is relieved when he seems to be staying in his own room. Eventually, the door slides open after a while and Ryokun climbs onto his bed and is joined by the huge cat as well.

XXX

Kenjaku knew sometimes the simplest decisions that didn’t seem to matter could have the most severe consequences. When a person is considering a major decision, they are thoughtful and typically cautious. But when they’re making a decision that seems menial, their thoughts simply aren’t that deep.

Now that he has Tore Reksten’s memories, he knows all about the game that his sister ran on Satoru Gojo.

Gojo, being a promiscuous lover of sweets, was presented at a bakery that he frequents the possibility to Ingrid. She had no cursed energy, so he had no reason to suspect she might be from their world. She was a foreign girl living abroad, which meant she was here for experiences and not anything permanent. She was beautiful.

Gojo didn’t step on that landmine once.

He did it twenty-eight times, and didn’t even know when it finally exploded. They didn’t have to trap him one time; they had to create a trap he would continually enter until they finally got what they wanted.

It was good work, and it really seems like they should have gotten away with it. Even reviewing Tore’s memories, Kenjaku can’t figure out how they got busted.

But Gojo learned from that experience and calculated that perhaps if he planted a landmine at the ryokan, his enemy might come and step on it. Maybe it would happen, maybe it would not. Even a five percent chance to reduce an enemy’s power by half is worth one hundred percent of a person’s effort.

All that being said, it really does seem like Gojo has found an avenue for information acquisition that is revealing things to him that he shouldn’t be able to know.

Being born all-powerful is ridiculous enough; does Gojo need to be all-knowing too?

What absolute bullshit that is!

Kenjaku was surprised to find out that even though Gojo knew he was in Geto’s body, Gojo was still hesitant to mess up Geto’s body, which is probably the only reason he was able to activate his escape plan.

There were complications on top of complications now; Shibuya Station Plan seemed like a silly little dream that could never work now.

While he could possibly use Temporal Distortion to solve the ‘one minute’ rule and get Gojo into the Prison Realm, there is a larger problem.

The fact that he has been properly identified changes everything. Based on the facts Gojo had about him, he’s sure that Gojo has started talking to Tengen, which means everything.

Kenjaku planned to rely on Gojo making the kinds of choices a wildly arrogant and comparatively young man would make. If Gojo strategizes alongside a very wise old woman who knows him, that changes everything.

What he thinks probably happened is that Tengen told Gojo about the Prison Realm, and that she had a piece of it. Then she told him if he did end up sealed, she could let him out if she had the ability to nullify the technique of the Prison Realm.

And then Gojo said, ‘What a fun coincidence, let me tell you where the Inverted Spear of Heaven is.’

In other words, the mere act of Gojo learning about Kenjaku before being put in it has messed things up. Even if Kenjaku gets him in there, he’ll probably just get out right away, and then he’ll be mad about it. This makes the Prison Realm about as useful as a soggy cardboard box.

Besides, Temporal Distortion bends time in a small radius around the user. If he runs up on Gojo in a body that’s not Suguru Geto’s, he’ll probably spend his last moment staring into the pretty purple light, and then what?

Kenjaku believes he can steal the techniques of the Culling Game players at the expense of killing them, so they can be used to help him get over his problem.

He could consume Angel’s technique and attempt to use it to nullify Gojo’s infinity.

He could consume Yorozu’s technique and replicate the Inverted Spear of Heaven.

That maybe gets him in the door, but he’d still need a technique to actually kill the monster. Reksten has an ice technique, but it’s very generic—a disappointment for someone who knows Uraume, with the bespoke Gojo clan technique Hellfrost.

Even if he consumed Kashimo’s technique, it wouldn’t get him there.

Reksten’s body can’t hold an infinite number of techniques, so he has to choose wisely, and unfortunately, he can’t make a hand from the Culling Game players that might be able to do the deed. That’s the whole reason that Gojo wasn’t supposed to participate in the game in the first place.

If he could get to Tengen to consume her technique and cursed energy, the mass of cursed energy she commands combined with Kashimo would probably put him over, but without Tengen, there’s no reason to even do the Culling Game.

Kenjaku considers living sorcerers:

Yuji is still a black box to him; he can’t remember why he made him. But he was last seen punching Mahito’s soul out of his body and according to a rumor that even made it to Kenjaku’s ears, Yuji ate Mahito.

What the fuck? But okay.

Kenjaku wonders if eating served any purpose. One assumes if he ate a curse, he would get something from the curse as a result.

That girl Kugisaki Nobara has an interesting technique, but not for Gojo.

There’s Megumi Fushiguro.

That’s right—the last person like Gojo born into this world died at the hands of someone like Megumi.

Could he kill Satoru Gojo with Ten Shadows?

The capability seems to be there, but that would require him to tame the tenth shadow, Mahoraga, and since no one has ever been able to do that, it seems risky. Since shikigami have some sentience, Kenjaku wonders if they would even serve another master.

Kenjaku isn’t sure if he wants to take the risk. Overpowering Megumi in order to take his technique, an act that would result in Megumi’s death, would almost inevitably result in Mahoraga being summoned on him, and it would be difficult to even find the opportunity. If he fucks up, even if he avoids Gojo’s wrath, Yuji might eat him.

Maybe the Rekstens were right, and babies were the way to go. It really was a neat and simple solution.

Reksten’s memories have confirmed that Ingrid Reksten, wherever she is, is definitely carrying a Gojo. There are a number of incredible techniques running in their family, and it would be surprising if the kid didn’t have one of them.

Just doing the math, the kid has been incubating for a while. If he cut it out right now, it would live long enough for him to lift the technique out of its body.

It’s most likely that she’s on the Gojo clan estate, and unfortunately, there’s an incredibly steep fee for trespassing there.

That’s probably where that little boy, Ryo Itadori, is too.

If Gojo has a way to obtain information that’s not accessible to him through natural channels, all the plans Kenjaku might try to make would be pointless. At the same time, he clearly can’t obtain all information, as if he did have that ability, Kenjaku wouldn’t be able to hide anywhere, and yet he is.

Kenjaku remains full of questions, because it really seems like the week or maybe even the day that Ryo Itadori appeared, there was some sort of enormous shift in everything.

Up to that point, he thought that everything was going according to his plan.

But a hole was blown in his plan when the Forgetting happened. Whatever was wiped out of their minds, it was critically important to what he was trying to do, and it definitely involved Yuji.

From that moment on, things had been going strangely.

Unpredictable.

So he’d just have to be unpredictable too.

What’s more unpredictable than taking Ten Shadows and using it to kill Satoru Gojo?

The answer to that question depends on how many arms the respondent has.

Chapter Text

Kenjaku realizes, once he has a moment to compose himself, that he missed something very important right at the time when everything shifted from going exactly according to his plans to this strange, unpredictable phase—a stage in the pre-game that could not have sucked harder.

The reason that he obtained this glorious body and its technique-stealing technique is because Satoru Gojo sent out a broadcast to all the other major sorcery houses in the world, looking for information about someone using a time manipulation ability.

It was all so convoluted, the things that went on between the foreigners and the target of their cruel scheme. Kenjaku applauded them; the siblings Reksten probably came close to stealing one of the Gojo clan’s crown jewels from them. From how astronomically powerful Gojo is, there’s almost no possibility that the baby doesn’t have one of the clan’s famed hereditary techniques.

Kenjaku is sure that the two sequences of events—the hunt for a time manipulator, and issue of the baby—are actually just one sequence of events. If he just ignores the scandal, and only considers all the other facts, there’s something positively revelatory sitting on the surface.

If Gojo sent out an email asking if anyone knew a sorcerer who killed by turning a person’s blood into pancake syrup, it would be reasonable to assume that the only reason he would ask that question is if he found a corpse full of pancake syrup. In other words, he was asking about the technique because he came into contact with evidence of the technique.

What prompted him to search for a time manipulator?

The only logical explanation is that Gojo encountered some sort of evidence to suggest time had been manipulated. Since the Temporal Distortion technique that Kenjaku inherited with this body doesn’t really leave evidence behind, Kenjaku’s mind wanders to the most spectacular possibility of all.

At the ryokan, Kenjaku was sure there was no possible way for the other camp to have found out both his identity and much of his plans. He uttered the word ‘foresight,’ and Gojo denied it, but sorcerers are liars.

It seems almost too sensational to even think about, and yet in this body, the same one Sukuna used to hurl Yuji’s soul back in time, Kenjaku can tell that under the right circumstances, if the right techniques were added to this body, it might be possible.

Kenjaku can’t argue something is impossible if he is able to figure out how he might do it himself.

It’s really so simple if he considers the fact that they were looking for a time manipulator and around the same time, gained access to information that was completely inaccessible to them.

One of the most compelling arguments for this theory is that a person, Ryo Itadori, just appeared out of nowhere.

Based on the fact that no historical texts before a very specific point in history were altered when the Forgetting happened, it was relatively easy to determine that whatever everyone forgot, it started back in their era. And it ended their era; from the context, texts that are missing references to whatever was forgotten always seems to be talking about some sort of cataclysm that occurred during the Heian Era.

Kenjaku thinks it is a single person, and also a Culling Game player because he was confident until the Forgetting happened that even if something went wrong, Gojo wasn’t going to ruin his plans, so it stood to reason that this mysterious cataclysm was that powerful.

Someone that powerful could never have an ordinary host. To bring it out of dormancy in this age, he’d need a special vessel that could contain it, which was interesting because he made Yuji, who ate Mahito, implying there is a space inside of Yuji that could contain something that powerful.

Yuji ate him.

What the actual fuck?

Did eating serve some purpose? Was Mahito still alive in some capacity inside of Itadori? Did he digest him somehow? And if so, what was the product of that digestion? Nothing, maybe an increase in energy of some sort or perhaps he even took Idle Transfiguration?

Kenjaku has so many questions.

But, one thing he is sure of—incorrectly, unfortunately for everyone—is that the key to everything is Ryokun.

Attributing the Forgetting and his toddler state to some sort of cursed energy accident, Kenjaku decides he can probably get his monster back if he restores him to his proper vessel. In other words, he wants to put Ryokun’s soul in Yuji’s body by turning it into a cursed object and forcing Yuji to eat him.

He doesn’t know for certain, but he’s sure that’s how it was supposed to go.

This requires overcoming three difficult obstacles:

First, he has to obtain the child, which seems to be nearly impossible because no one has seen him and he is presumably at the Gojo clan estate, safe under the branches of the clan’s cursed tree.

Uraume can come and go from that place because she is kin to those people, but it seems like anyone else sneaking around or not a guest of the clan will wake up the monster. He doesn’t know where she is, but he’s fairly certain she might actually be skulking around Kyoto.

He believes he can convince her to participate in this scheme because they will be ‘helping’ her former master regain his original form.

There is a bonus objective on the Gojo clan estate grounds; the woman carrying Gojo’s baby is definitely also there. The baby is far enough along that Kenjaku could extract it from the mother and take the technique. If he’s lucky, he might get a copy of Limitless, and after a millennium of fighting this family, there’s nothing he’d love more than to kill some of them with their own prized technique.

If Uraume won’t cooperate, Jogo can probably just burn the tree. He has the scale and the fire is obviously the worst thing for a tree. But a frontal assault at that location is very high risk because the Jujutsu Society is right next door, and there are people in the Gojo clan who don’t fuck with the Jujutsu Society or are retired who will fight, like the old man that showed up at the ryokan.

Since Gojo has concentrated all of his power in one spot, it’s likely not possible to assemble a force capable of overpowering those forces. Even trying a strategic approach would probably not work.

Of course, there is a Plan B here; if he’s not able to get his fighter back, he can always just harvest the technique from the little body. He would have to fight and kill Uraume if that happened since it would kill the brat. Plan A results in three capable fighters and Plan B results in one, and that’s what makes it Plan B.

He’s glad his rage has quelled and that he’s moved on from thoughts of vengeance to refocusing his mental energies on his actual goals. He still intends to make sure Satoru Gojo dies, but he can do that and work toward the Culling Game at the same time.

When October 31 comes and goes, he pouts, because he has been set back so much.

He considers waking up the other Culling Game players and letting them run amok, but he always intended to do so remotely using Idle Transfiguration, and the Jujutsu Society definitely knows who some of them are like Yorozu’s host. If they know about the Culling Game, showing up to wake one up might summon that guy.

Gojo was hesitant to be too rough with Geto’s body at the ryokan, but Kenjaku is no longer in that body, so he won’t get so lucky again if he has another unwanted interaction with Gojo.

If Idle Transfiguration or Mahito still exist inside of Yuji, when he puts his monster into the body, he might gain access to Idle Transfiguration again, so he decides to wait.

He entertains fantasies where Mahito could simply be expelled from inside of Yuji and his only true loss at the ryokan was Hanami.

He considers that maybe it wasn’t a loss at all, since he discovered that Yuji can eat strange things and they will simply disappear inside of him. It’s the piece of the puzzle that helps confirm his other theories about the Forgetting.

In other words, Yuji eating Mahito suggests he is actually some sort of special vessel, and Ryo Itadori is likely actually a sorcerer that can clear Gojo but he has been trapped in a smaller form due to some accident or incident probably related to time manipulation.

At least, that’s his theory. It’s wrong, but testing wrong theories is what the advancement of knowledge is all about.

The possibility that Ryokun is actually just a toddler is inconvenient, so he doesn’t consider it in the same way that he doesn’t consider that if someone traveled backwards in time, it might because the future didn’t work out. As someone trying to change that future, Kenjaku’s mind simply ignores this.

It’s mid-November by the time he finds Uraume, who is staying in Kyoto.

When he pitches his plan to her, his plan to ‘save,’ the person she apparently refers to as ‘Young Master,’ she is eager to help him. Of course, he doesn’t mention that if things don’t go the way he wants, he’ll just collect the technique from the kid and then kill her when she tries to avenge him.

If he can get the other baby too, good.

Uraume has been watching Ryo Itadori from the big tree from time to time, so she’s actually seen Ingrid Reksten, who is confined to a cottage on the estate that is somewhat isolated. According to Uraume, she only saw her outside one time, in the middle of the night, when she came outside and looked up at the stars for a while.

It doesn’t make sense in her mind that she yearns to return serving a little child. The idea that his state is some sort of accident or something that her true master needs to be saved from makes more sense to her than anything.

If she has to do some unsavory favors for Kenjaku to make that happen, so be it.

Unaware of the plans being made, Yuji and Ryokun and the students move forward with their lives, training and going to class.

Things seem calm, but uneasiness remains between Yuji and Gojo, who are a bit at a loss as the days tick by and there is no sign of trouble.

As the temperature drops, it seems that whatever happened at Shibuya simply wasn’t going to happen.

By then, Nanami, still posted in Tokyo, is wearing sweaters and Nobara is wearing leggings instead of hose, but in Yuji’s vision they died before it got cold enough for them to dress for winter.

Gojo remains fixed on the fact that if he died in the other timeline before the baby was born, there is someone in this world who can kill him, and they are supposed to meet soon.

On the board, a note remains, “Who is Legs?” a reference to part of a human corpse that Yuji has seen in his visions. Sometimes Gojo wonders how cruel it would be, to die like that; in what is probably Yuji’s earliest vision, the legs are standing in the middle of the battlefield by themselves. The idea that someone could be cut in half by something so sharp that the body remained balanced was actually kind of scary.

Legs is important, because it doesn’t seem like Legs was killed the same way everyone else was. Legs is also already Legs before everyone else dies, so it seems like that person died first, and then everyone else followed.

Over time, he realizes that the death of Legs is followed by students, allies, most of the Jujutsu Society…like Legs was the thing holding back the hell that followed.

Someone holding back the terror would have to either be him or Okkotsu, but Okkotsu appears alive in flashes later in the battle.

Deep inside, he decides it’s probably him. He fails, dies, and the world is eclipsed by this mysterious creature who wipes out most of the sorcerers. Six Eyes passes on to his child, like a curse, and when she grows up, it kills her too.

Unbeknownst to Gojo, there are two requirements for Alghera to be born in the unkillable state she was:

First, he has to die during the Culling Game.

Second, he has to create the anti-infinity technique before he does.

Sukuna is not present to force that evolution out of him, but the fact that he believes that someone cut through his infinity with some overwhelming power that he was instantly butchered causes him to begin thinking about what he can do if infinity doesn’t work. Is there a way to make it better?

The anti-infinity technique is slowly taking root in the back of his brain simply because he began to believe he is going to be cut up by someone despite the fact that someone retired from the game.

Every day that passes by is both a day closer to his expected death, and also, a day closer to the arrival of his child, who he evidently did not even meet in the other timeline.

Gojo still has a lot of not-good feelings about becoming a dad, and he feels embarrassed and inwardly ashamed, especially considering how attached he gets to kids that aren’t his. He thinks he’s supposed to be an overly excited, Maes Hughes expectant father.

He knows most of this stems from the situation with the mother, and he still hasn’t gone back to that cottage since he left her there. His grandmother handles that whole situation, although he has been privy to discussions about whether to tell Ingrid about anything that’s been going on outside.

His grandmother had elected not to, because everything Ingrid did, she did for her brother and for her clan, but her clan has been killed and so has her brother. As soon as she leaves, she’s probably going to be killed too.

She’s been kept in the dark because the last update she had, Tore was possibly still alive. Likely holding out hope that he’s going to rescue her and collect his prize, she plays along nicely and doesn’t cause a fuss.

 It seems incredibly cruel to him that they’ve effectively imprisoned her and that they haven’t even told her that her brother has been dead for a while, but the overwhelming concern is that she will kill herself or the baby because if Tore is dead, she’s just having a baby for the enemy largely responsible for his end. The baby is a thing of value, and taking it away is her final act of spite.

So, it’s all very, very bad and yet he has no idea how anything could be better.

He’s sure things will be fine once the baby is born, but it’s just a whole thing in the moment.

At least, that’s what he hopes.

He receives a text message one day while he stands at the fork of the path leading to the cottage, staring off in the distance.

It’s from Maki, asking to talk, which is unusual, because Maki really doesn’t talk to him. He advocates fervently on her behalf, and she always expresses her gratitude, but he’s never been particularly close to her personally.

Maki’s heart is sort of like a sealed terrarium; strong, self-sustaining, capable of surviving anything, and yet it thrives because it is sealed.

Gojo doesn’t bother that situation; her traumas aren’t as simple as someone who went through something bad who just needs to talk it out.

Because of this, he assumes that she wants to talk to him about sorcery, but she doesn’t want to do it at the Jujutsu Society.

Can they talk privately? She means privately.

He invites her to come talk to him at home, since his wife is out shopping for the afternoon.

Maki, being raised a Zenin, grew up hearing all sorts of weird stuff about the Gojos, and it is also true that people in her clan have been eaten by the giant tree, but nothing bad happens as she walks through the gate and is met by Gojo.

It’s quite chilly out, and so when they get to the residence, he makes coffee, and she fidgets at the table.

“You want something to eat? I know you don’t like sweets much. We have some homemade spicy daikon pickles, a little leftover beef with veggies, pumpkin bread, not really sweet.”

He browses the fridge, and the smell from when he opened the beef wafts to her nose, and she covers her mouth.

“Where is your restroom?” she asks, urgency in her voice.

“Right down the hall, third door.”

Gojo can very clearly hear her puking until she’s just dry heaving.

He goes to the door and asks, “Are you all right? You eat something weird? Questionable leftovers? Raw oysters? If you want to rinse your mouth out, there’s mouthwash and cups in the cabinet to the right of the sink.”

When he doesn’t get an answer, he goes back to the kitchen and waits. Coffee is no good for an upset stomach, so he starts on some ginger tea instead.

As Maki comes out, he asks, “You want to pick this up some other time? Seems like you’re under the weather.”

“It’s fine. I needed to talk to someone who is as stupid as I am, that’s all.”

“You’re pretty bright, so I’m going to take that as a compliment. What’s going on, Maki?”

Maki stands at the end of the hall, and nervously says, “I’ve been feeling kind of weird lately. Bad. Really tired. So tired I feel like I could just go into a coma. And sick to my stomach in the morning, and over smells. And it’s just…Yuta and me…you know…you know.”

Satoru can only frown, and say, “Oh no. Have you taken a test?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to get you a test? I can tell you if you want me to. All I have to do is take off my blindfold and I’ll be able to tell.”

Maki shrugs. “I mean, there’s no difference, right? I might doubt a test, but I’m not going to doubt your dumb eyeballs.”

He pulls down the blindfold, and a missing piece of Yuji’s puzzle falls into place.

There is a character in his visions of Later Shinjuku that is also a teenager like the Six Eyes user, and he has some sort of variant of Ten Shadows. Since it’s extremely rare for ancient techniques like Ten Shadows to evolve, it would take really specific circumstances to make that happen.

…Like if Maki provided Ten Shadows and Yuta Okkotsu also provided an extremely powerful technique that involved shikigami.

This grape-sized dab of cursed energy has something like Ten Shadows that is not Ten Shadows.

“I can see it.”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Shit!”

Unplanned pregnancy is traumatic, deeply stressful, and not at all the funny or wholesome experience it is sometimes portrayed as. Maybe some people made peace with it, but as someone who was still struggling with his own feelings, Satoru just feels nearly sick with empathy for Maki.

They probably fucked up, maybe things got a little out of hand and they weren’t particularly careful, but it’s not a sin to love someone. And if she and Yuta really loved each other like that, he felt like Maki deserved as much time as she wanted to bask in the feelings of being loved and wanted by someone else.

“You must think I’m stupid.”

Gojo says, “Obviously, I also accidentally made a person this year, so I don’t think that. It’s not stupid to care about someone else. Being with other people is just part of being an adult. It’s risky to love someone though. And just because you’re in this condition, it doesn’t mean you have to go through with anything. This early on it’s easier to cancel your subscription, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know how Yuta would feel about that.”

“This isn’t about Yuta.”

They spend a long time talking about the situation, about Maki’s life in general, how she thinks of herself and others. It’s so strange to just be able to talk to her and not be greeted by a wall, but he feels like this is probably a one-time exception she is making and that she won’t let her guard down again.

Fundamentally, as someone who was rejected by her own mother, she is incapable of rejecting her own pregnancy. It’s not necessarily out of fear that she would become her mother or anything like that, it’s just not how Maki works. There are sentiments in her that built up over the course of her life, moments she said, ‘If I ever have a kid, I’ll do this or that,’ or ‘I’ll make sure they never feel like this.’

There was a certain kind of embarrassment being a teenager and facing an unexpected baby.

“People are going to know.”

Gojo answers, “Adults are all either regularly having sex, or they wish they were. It’s not a big deal.”

“Do you think the Zenin clan is going to be a problem? I mean…can you tell if they’re going to be a problem?”

Gojo says, “Baby’s got a technique worth fighting over, but it’ll be fine. Even if you’re going to be out of fighting condition for a while, nobody wants to mess with Yuta, and I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. You do have a sister here too, you know.”

“I was really hoping to kill my dumb clan soon.”

“Well, we’ll have to put a pin in family elimination and come back to it next year.”

Maki asks, “Are you disappointed? I feel like you’ve done a lot on my behalf trying to get me promoted and whatever.”

“I am absolutely not. Raising a baby sorcerer is a pain in the ass, so if you come back to work after or you don’t, I don’t have any regrets. You shouldn’t either.”

“I mean, I don’t know how to even take care of a baby.”

Satoru says, “My kid is going to be born soon, so you two can just hang out with us and learn stuff. There’s Ryokun, and my kid, and now yours. A little baby boom composed entirely of people who were not expected to show up in the world. The Whoopsies.”

“Do you think I’d be a good mom?”

“Of course. You’re going to be such a mama bear.”

Before she gets ready to go back, she gives him a hug. A real hug. It feels so rare, like seeing a double rainbow or something.

“I’m going to tell everyone you hugged me.”

“No one will believe you.”

He feels a little sad about the incredible stress that awaits Maki and Yuta, but all he can do is support them. Yuta will probably take the news very well, be a model expectant father and boyfriend, maybe even husband.

They love each other, so they will probably do a lot better.

But yes, the Zenin clan is going to be a pain in the ass over this baby and his hybrid technique. Ten Shadows evolving after hundreds of years and being born to the clan’s reject is only a more humiliating repeat of Megumi being born to the other reject.

Gojo wonders about what future Yuji was like, having watched Baby Okkotsu and Baby Gojo grow up, and then see them be brutally killed. Maki and her son both definitely died in Later Shinjuku, along with Six Eyes girl.

What was it like, once the battle was over?

Did they even win?

Future Yuji lost his wife, his kids, all his friends and allies, kids he watched grow up.

Sometimes Gojo wonders if the reason he can’t remember more is because there is a certain part of him that simply can’t bear it. Yuji is kind, funny, emotionally sensitive to others, and quick to love and befriend everybody.

It is unreasonable to assume that he was still like that after everything that happened.

He imagines the Yuji that came back in time was probably incredibly weary, worn down to nothing by years and years of disappoints and deaths.

While he’s considering all this, the back door suddenly flies open, and Ryokun practically throws his shoes as he enters, out of breath, and quickly slams the door. He’s clearly just run off from whatever auntie is watching the little ones at the moment. No one else in the clan would just barge into his personal residence, but Ryokun spends enough time there that he kind of thinks of it as also being part of his home.

He runs through the living room and into the kitchen.

“Chiyo isn’t here. It’s just me home right now.”

“Can I have some water? Please?”

Gojo gets up and says, “How about a juice box? You’ve been running around so much lately you’re getting less squishy.”

Ryokun is in the phase of life where he’s transitioning from being a chubby baby that has achieved mobility to a small child with a taller, leaner body. A lot of the adorable clumsiness has left him, and he can move alarmingly fast despite having such short legs.

“You want interested in some work as a moosoosoo?”

“What kind of candy you got?”

“Peach kitkat.”

“Okay.”

Satoru lays down in the living room after Ryokun finishes his juice box, and the toddler stomps and jumps on his back until it cracks again.

There’s a knock on the door the kid ran through, and when Satoru answers, he finds his middle-aged aunt, out-of-breath and so annoyed she looks like she might spontaneously combust.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Master Satoru. Have you seen a very small demon?”

The sound of tiny footsteps pounding up the stairs echoes throughout the downstairs.

Satoru says, “It’s fine. I’ll hand him off to Yuji when he makes it back here in a few minutes.”

Ryokun creeps down once she leaves, and then sits and eats his Kitkat while he asks Gojo all kinds of questions and tells him things. He found a big stick, but then he used it to hit someone, so it was taken away. But it was a really cool stick.

He sends Yuji a text letting him know where Ryokun is, and Yuji collects him when he’s finished with school and conditioning for the day.

Yuji has a guest with him today, Aoi Todo, who he promised to teach to make his now-famous meatballs.

Ryokun has seen Todo before; he was one of the sorcerers that helped thwart his attempted kidnapping. Despite that, they haven’t really met or spent any time together, and Ryokun Yuji notices that he has an unusually neutral opinion of Todo.

He either intensely likes or dislikes nearly everyone as soon as he meets them, but he seems undecided about Todo because in his past life, his opinion was also mostly neutral.

When they get back to the apartment, that changes very quickly because Ryokun goes all day without seeing Yuji, and when they reunite each day, he’s used to having all of Yuji’s attention.

He wants to tell Yuji about the stick he found, and Todo is hogging the conversation talking about how youth is like butter or something. The way that Todo talks does not make enormous amounts of sense to Ryokun because he has a rather floral and poetic way of expressing himself.

“I WANT TO TALK ABOUT MY STICK!” he abruptly shouts.

Todo looks down and realizes he has angered the little one. “Sorry, little guy. I was so excited to have a cooking lesson with my brother that I wasn’t even paying attention.”

Ryokun frowns. “…your what?”

“My brother!”

In two words, Todo becomes a mortal enemy.

Todo suddenly flashes a big grin at the already irate boy and asks, “Ryo Itadori, I have a question for you! What kind of woman is your type?”

Ryokun doesn’t understand the question or the reason for asking it in the first place.

He slaps Todo’s hand because he doesn’t like being pointed at, and then looks up at Yuji, who is irritated with Todo. Yuji is actually kind of amazed at how bad he is with children.

Todo asks, “…well?”

Yuji says, “Todo wants to know, what kind of girls you think are pretty?”

Ryokun thinks about this for a moment or two and then says, “I like girls with white hair.”

Todo’s expression drops. “Your taste in women couldn’t be worse. Men who have boring taste in women are themselves boring. You’re boring, Ryo Itadori! A man like you doesn’t deserve to be brother to Yuji!”

Yuji wonders why he didn’t anticipate this problem in advance?

Todo is the top scholar of all the Jujutsu Society students, but Todo is also insane. He’s telling a literal toddler that he doesn’t deserve to be part of his family—which Todo has added himself to—because his taste in women is boring, which is definitely attributable to the fact he is literally a child.

 Todo says, “Yuji likes a tall woman with a big ass.”

“I’m not allowed to say ‘ass.’”

“Even if you said big titties!”

“What’s titties?”

Yuji quickly says, “No, no, no, no, no. Todo, you do not understand. Do not teach him anything that anyone might find offensive.”

Todo can’t even hear him, he’s so enthusiastic as he holds his hands out in front of his chest. “It’s when a woman has big breasts, big soft round mountains for squeezing.”

Ryokun, who has sat down on the floor with his cat, pointedly repeats, “I like girls with white hair.”

“My brother Yuji is a fine man, capable of appreciating a truly fine woman.”

“YOU’RE NOT YUJI’S BROTHER, I AM!”

“Everyone knows this is false. I am a true brother,” Todo insists.

Ryokun decides he’s had enough and he’s just going to attack, but Todo is an absolute giant compared to him, so he grabs one of Todo’s hands and bites it as hard as he can. His jaws clench down so tight that when Todo lifts his hand, Ryokun levitates off the floor like a dog holding onto a rope toy, complete with growling noises.

Yuji says, “No, no! Enough! Stop fighting with him. He is a toddler. Have you never spoken to a child before?”

Ryokun digs his teeth in harder, and Yuji grabs him and pulls.

“No biting! No! Let go!”

Ryokun lets go and yells, “I’m the brother!”

Neither of these people are actually his siblings, but Ryokun is a child who lives with him and Todo is a grown man who entertains weird fantasies about them having known each other for years.

This is Todo’s fault.

Todo is offended by Ryokun’s taste in women and has challenged his right to be Yuji’s brother and defamed the name of white-haired girls. There are things that Ryokun just isn’t going to stand for.

Ryokun is unaware that he will soon have to deal with another person claiming to be a brother.

The meatballs burn while Yuji tries to diffuse the situation, but when he turns to try and turn the stove off, Ryokun punches Todo as hard as he can in the crotch, screeches like a banshee, and then runs down the hall to his room.

“Todo, what on earth is wrong with you, dude?”

“The real question is what is wrong with little Ryo? He is young. We can teach him better ways.”

Yuji answers, “We are not teaching him about titties and ass, what the hell? Furthermore, it’s not good to mess with him. Ryokun has kind of a dark side. I don’t know how to explain it, but things just work out for him.”

“What’s he going to do? Bite my ankles?”

Yuji feels like an annoyed parent, trying to teach Todo about things he could and couldn’t say to Ryokun, who sulks in his room for a while.

When Ryokun comes back, his attitude has improved somewhat, and Yuji calmly explains that it’s extremely, inexcusably offensive to women for men to talk about such things with them. It’s an insult, evil, rude, never do it, all that stuff.

He orchestrates an apology between the two parties, and just when everything seems like it’s going to be okay and Yuji is starting again on the meatballs, a visitor comes to the door.

It’s Gojo’s seemingly very pregnant wife, and Yuji feels a kind of nervousness and impending doom as she enters the apartment. He quietly prays that Ryokun does not utter the word ‘titties’ while she is there, and that he does not tell her about what has been discussed.

Chiyo has brought Ryokun a new toy, and like most of her little gifts, it’s a strange little musical instrument that makes a strange rattling sound when struck. Having a friend of the family who constantly gifts one’s child with noisy toys feels like a curse, but Ryokun’s little instruments actually do put him in a good mood.

He’s sure he’s heard the sound of the vibraslap before, but he can’t remember when or why. It makes him feel nervous for some reason, like that sound is warning of danger.

Ryokun is so polite and happy with Chiyo, expresses gratitude, tells her happily about his stick, which is all he ever wanted.

Yuji is literally sweating out of nervousness. Please don’t say ‘titties.’ He chants it in his head, over and over.

As Chiyo gets ready to leave a wave of relief washes over Yuji, but Ryokun tugs on her skirt and says, “Mr. Todo said you got big titties.”

Yuji deflates, and Todo quickly argues, “I never said that. He lies!”

Chiyo looks over at Yuji. “Where did this beautiful baby boy learn the word ‘titties,’ Yuji?”

Yuji feels like if he tells Gojo’s wife that Ryokun is lying, it’s going to put Ryokun in the worst mood, because then Yuji would have betrayed him to side with the imposter brother. Like, he just knows that he’s going to regret it. But he also knows that letting Ryokun lie is also bad.

Furthermore, he has to answer this question, and so he says, “Todo is the one that taught him the word. But Ryokun is lying.”

“Traitor!” Ryokun calls.

Yuji knows he’s going to pay for it, and adds, “He was only talking about women in general. He didn’t name you.”

The black-haired woman locks onto his gaze and asks, “Do you think that I’m not a woman, Yuji?”

Ryokun leans his head on her and revels in the chaos that he has created.

Todo explains, “I simply asked him what type of girl is his type. His answer was unsatisfactory, and I merely wanted to teach him the things of men.”

“What are the ‘things of men?’ Please. Explain this to me in a way that my weak, female mind can comprehend,” Chiyo asks.

Todo does not provide an answer that helps the situation.

She chews them all the way out, about talking about objectifying women, speaking crudely about their bodies, and passing that toxic knowledge onto such a young mind. Todo is the one who did it, but no one is spared in this conversation except Ryokun.

Then in her capacity as the lady of the Gojo clan, she banishes Todo from the estate.

“What’s banished?” Ryokun asks.

“It means he has to leave, and he can never come back.”

Ryokun had never heard of this, but it is wonderful to him. He claps the vibraslap and exclaims, “Banished! Go away! Never come back!”

Todo asks, “Can I eat my meatballs first?”

“Fine. But I’m taking this,” she says, carrying Ryokun off to so he can have dinner and treats in a Todo-free environment, which is all he wanted in the first place.

As soon as the door closes, Yuji mockingly says, “What’s he going to do? Bite my ankles?”

Across the garden, Satoru Gojo catches a stray as his wife comes to dinner of takeout she brought from her trip, annoyed to the highest extents because his students were acting like pigs. Isn’t he their teacher? Isn’t he a male role model that should be teaching them better ways? What is he doing as the most powerful sorcerer and the greatest influence over their lives to ensure that the next generation isn’t as toxic and misogynistic as the ones that preceded?

He has plans for a very romantic evening, but his wife is now in a bad mood.

Gojo considers two of the strongest students:

There’s Yuta, a flimsy-looking dude who timidly tiptoes around the world, and then there’s Todo, who thinks himself a monument to masculinity and desire. One managed to impregnate the toughest female in Jujutsu society, the other has such a horrible aura that he can make women avoid not only him but other men as well.

When Satoru is walking the tot back home after he crashed their dinner, he spots Todo.

Gojo says nothing, appears behind him, and punches him in the back of the head so hard that a Todo-shaped imprint is left on the fluffy groundcover in the tea garden.

“My wife is in a bad mood, and I don’t appreciate it. You will write a formal apology tomorrow. If you write the words ‘tits,’ or ‘asses’ on that piece of paper, I’ll break your arms.”

When he looks up from the ground, Todo is seeing stars and his ears are ringing, but Ryokun is standing on the wooden walkway, looking down at him.

He slaps the vibraslap. “Banished! Go away!”

“What he said,” Gojo adds.

Once Ryokun has been delivered home, Yuji puts him in the bath, exasperated by this child and his madness. Obviously, Ryokun didn’t know what would happen, but he knew if he lied on Todo to Gojo’s wife, something would happen.

Todo came over, started a beef with Ryokun, and by the time the evening concluded, Todo was banished from the estate and had been clubbed in the head by Gojo.

It’s very weird to Yuji how Ryokun just sort of has this sense of chaotic mischief, and that when engaged, things usually fall in place for him.

“Are you pleased with yourself?”

“Yea. I’m your brother. Just me. And I like girls with white hair.”

They have a Facetime with Yuko before bed where Ryokun excitedly retells this strange story, and Yuko with younger siblings possesses the ability to comprehend his toddler speak quite well.

She always laughs at the antics of the brother duo, at their daily craziness, at Ryokun climbing all over Yuji and trying out his new jokes on her.

Yuji is grateful that Yuko is able to accept that Ryokun is just part of his life, and that her warmth and kindness toward Ryokun allows him to be just as enthusiastic about the relationship. Ryokun is not going to share Yuji with Aoi Todo, but he’s happy to share with Yuko.

As he thinks about his future after high school, he really, from a very deep place, wants to start his life with her. She’s just as crazy about him, and that makes him happy. He knows he had kids in the other future, and he’s not ready for any of that, but the idea of living someday with Ryokun and Yuko makes his heart very happy.

Settling into bed later that night, he notes again that things are changing for him. Yuji is sure it’s because he ate the curse Mahito, but he’s begun to vaguely see the outline of people’s souls increasingly clearly.

The weird thing is that this seems like something new, something that didn’t happen to him before, but the shape of Ryokun’s soul is familiar to him. And only that one. Why would he only know this one single soul? How would he know the shape of another person’s soul if he didn’t gain this ability in the other timeline?

What does it mean?

Since Mahito didn’t get to show off much in this timeline before he met his end, the sorcerers didn’t even know the name of his innate technique, and most of the information they had about it came from observing him in brief periods he tangled with sorcerers and Satoru Gojo’s read of the technique.

It really seems like the technique is starting to merge with him, although Yuji isn’t sure how to activate it.

He urgently wants to figure it out, because even though everything seems peaceful, he remains terrified that the violence of his visions will start at any time. After all, they’re in the advertising period of the Dragonball movie, and by the time it ends probably in January, everything is already ruined.

They still have no idea whether the monster that kills everyone is a curse user that is living somewhere in the world that no one knows about, or if it’s a cursed spirit that simply hasn’t been born yet.

Even though he relies on Gojo for a lot, because he has a lot more knowledge, experience, and power, Yuji believes that stopping the dark future will somehow ultimately come down to him, like it’s his task that has been assigned to him by fate.

He believes a moment is going to come that tests him, and if he fails, all of those horrible things will still happen, and if he succeeds, he will get to live happily with all the people he has come to care about so much.

If he didn’t eat Mahito in the other timeline, maybe that is the break that he needs.

Sometimes, he views the dark future as if it is a giant monster, and they can’t see it. They don’t know where it is or why it exists. But it’s going to snap its jaws closed one day, and once they do, no one will be able to escape.

At the dorms that night, Yuta is studying for an exam when Maki comes to his door. This is quite surprising, because while she does come and go from his room, she usually comes through the window because she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s been sleeping in his room.

Most people seem to know they’re close, but he doesn’t think anyone knows that since he came back from Africa, they’ve gotten quite serious.

Ryosuke Okkotsu has queued up to enter the world a couple of months earlier than in the other timeline due to the fact that Yuta returned from Africa earlier this time, but that’s not the only difference this time around.

Maki sits on the edge of his bed, and he says, “You look like you have something on your mind.”

She wonders if she should blurt it out? Try to work up to it? Maki isn’t good at being gentle, which kind of scares her when she considers she’s going to be a mother soon, and even though she felt better about everything after she finished talking to Gojo, she feels anxious.

When they found out about their child in the other timeline, the world had already begun to take its terrifying form, and they didn’t know if their child would get to live much of a life. Having a baby while everything was falling apart and society was collapsing had seemed selfish in some ways.

But none of that is happening now.

Now, they’re just two teenagers in love who could have planned things better.

Maki says, “I’m pregnant, Yuta.”

Yuta feels like he’s been hit by a sudden gust of wind that might knock him down. He stands there, stunned, his cheeks turning a little red, and a strange sensation of butterflies in his belly that makes him feel like he might throw up or float away or maybe both.

He’s not someone who is really capable of regretting his love, and even in those first moments, he doesn’t really feel bad about the news. It’s stressful, unplanned, untimely, but it doesn’t feel bad to him.

Maki says, “I don’t know how you feel about that. I’ve already decided that I’m going to have the baby. I won’t force that fate on you. If you don’t want to be a father, we don’t ever have to talk about this again. I’ll take care of everything.”

“We’re gonna have a baby?”

She nods.

Yuta is just a very different person than his teacher, and the idea that the woman he loves is having his baby is such an enormous fact that it becomes the most important thing in his mind as he sits next to her and wraps his arms around Maki.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of you. Both of you.”

Yuta is a working special grade sorcerer, so finances aren’t an issue, and they’re actually both very committed to their relationship and each other. There is maybe some humiliation at being their age and in this position, the surprise that it happened, a passing sense of impending doom that their lives are about to irreversibly change, but Yuta doesn’t really ever feel upset or bad about the news.

He wanted to have a family with Maki someday, but someday in his mind was like ten years in the future.

Maki almost wanted him to at least be upset. Maybe he could be mad or shocked or argue about whether they should have a baby, or talk about how inconvenient it was, or at least mention that a baby was going to ruin their lives or do some of the normal inconvenienced guy stuff like in movies and tv.

But nope.

Yuta is all sugar, no spice when it comes to her. He’s her guy if she’s going to have a baby or needs an extra sword to help her slay her lousy family. Instead of expressing fear or doubt, he has a kiss for her and her tummy and reassurances that everything is going to be okay even if this is unexpected.

She’s so tired because she’s pregnant, and he’s so sweet and warm, and he didn’t freak out. He was just understanding and kind and comforting like always, and there are so many things she wants to say, but she ends up falling asleep instead.

He keeps stays up watching over his lover turned mother of his child, but his butterflies won’t allow him to sleep so he stays up reading on his phone, learning about what a trimester is and what is actually going on in there.

While he’s up, he senses something strange.

It almost reminds him of how even a quiet room becomes quieter when the power goes out because the constant, slight background noise of electronics humming in the background stops for a little while.

He’s been outside of Japan, so he knows he experienced the same feeling the first time he left Tengen’s barrier.

The sensation is imperceptible to most sorcerers, whether because they aren’t as aware or because they have never been outside of Tengen’s barriers before.

Tengen’s barriers are down.

And so, Kenjaku makes his next move.

Chapter Text

A symphony, directed by the greatest:

A key piece of information that his enemies are not aware of is that Uraume can come and go from the Gojo clan estate without angering the Kotaru, the demon tree.

This is how he acquired Suguru Geto’s body.

Kenjaku is unaware about whether Satoru Gojo is aware that he and Uruame are distant kin to each other; whether or not he knows this probably depends on whether or not there are any other living members of the Gojo clan with Uraume’s inherited technique. It’s also possible that the technique might have evolved over the centuries, and instead of Gojo seeing ‘Gojo clan technique Hellfrost,’ to his eyes, he might just be seeing some other ice technique.

It doesn’t matter.

Uraume has evidently been able to skulk around on the property while Gojo is there without being caught as long as she hides within the cursed energy of the tree. If they pull him away and keep him away, she’ll be able to come down from there.

Kenjaku has two sets of goals to complete in two distant locations. The first was acquiring Ryo Itadori, and possibly, the little baby Gojo. He believed that he could regain the Forgotten Monster if he could obtain Ryo Itadori, and from the little Baby Gojo, he really just wants to steal one of the Gojo clan’s powerful techniques. He has dreams that kid will come out with Limitless and he will get to taste that strange fruit himself.

The other was more complicated.

Losing Geto’s technique created one very specific complication: Tengen.

Since Tengen was transitioning into being something akin to a curse, he could have manipulated her and reduced her to an innocuous form using Cursed Spirit Manipulation.

But that ship had sailed…or had it?

He only needed to use the technique for a moment, and he did have a means to that end.

It was a risk—it was such a risk.

One of his hired guns, Ogami, had the Séance technique, and that opened the door for him to borrow Cursed Spirit Manipulation long enough to turn Tengen into something a little easier to handle.

He could survive a setback; winning was always just a matter of time, of predicting which levers he might need to pull or which buttons he might need to press.

That said, Kenjaku had to pull a card out of his deck, and he’s not happy about it.

Burning Yorozu’s cursed object to get a second copy of the Prison Realm that the Jujutsu Society did not have a part of was the pits, and while Kenjaku is sure that he will win, he is also sure that he’s being forced to pay a very high price for it.

Now there is Prison Realm A, which Tengen has a piece of, and Prison Realm B, fully intact. Prison Realm A has been rendered useless because the sorcerers definitely have access to a piece of it and a weapon that can nullify it. There’s no reason to trifle with it; if couldn’t contain a paperclip if the sorcerers decided to open it.

Prison Realm B is a completely different object.

Losing a battle in a war can be instrumental in learning how to fight an opponent, and so, despite the hefty price incurred when he was found out, despite probably having foresight on his side, despite being the strongest…

Satoru Gojo will go inside the box.

He will get Tengen ready for the Culling Game.

And he will get the Forgotten Monster back.

If said monster was really powerful enough that he wasn’t worried about Satoru Gojo, even if Gojo had a full team of competent allies, with him put away, it wouldn’t matter.

Kenjaku ponders the nature of the Forgotten Monster while Ryomen Sukuna is in the spirit world, on his boat again, annoyed.

He doesn’t exactly know what’s going on in the world of the living because he can only observe from Ryokun’s perspective and they’re all getting better about not saying stuff in front of him, but he managed to overhear Gojo and Yuji talking about how Kenjaku has Tore Reksten’s body.

Honestly, Sukuna can’t think of anything happening that could possibly be worse than that, like what the hell are Yuji and Gojo doing? What fucking purpose does their dumb little investigation even serve if they’re going to make everything worse?

Sukuna assumed they’d probably be fine because Gojo has to die in order for Alghera to spawn in her unkillable form, but it’s reasonable to assume that Kenjaku can probably make that happen with access to the correct tools.

Even though Kenjaku doesn’t remember who he is, Sukuna knows him better than anyone, and can reasonably predict what step Kenjaku will take next. Sukuna is sure beyond any doubt that Kenjaku probably still has access to Séance and will use it to channel Suguru Geto to get his hands on Tengen’s fetal form.

The ability of Séance to interact with the spirit world is quite extraordinary, but according to what Sukuna read about the incident at Shibuya, the person holding the technique is very old and has therefore run out of time to do anything meaningful with this power besides stage little brief resurrections of power.

Considering the Toji Fushiguro incident, she is not aware that using her technique to resurrect powerful souls can result in unexpected consequences.

So, complaining inwardly—do I have to do everything?—he has set out on another journey in the spirit world, this time hoping to find Suguru Geto.

It takes forever, and he’s annoyed at everything by the time he locates Geto’s spirit. He’s in a beach town on some random island with the spirit of a girl with black hair and blue eyes.

They’re wearing swimsuits and lazing about on a beach in the part of the spirit world that is always daytime. The half where he lives is always night, and in the middle there’s a nice twilight area.

Sukuna thinks it would be annoying to be in the sun constantly and quite likes the peaceful, starry night on the other side.

He has an obscene amount of karma, which other spirits can detect, so as he approaches, Geto and the girl turn to stare at him.

Geto says, “A four-armed monster with billions of karma? We heard about you. Ryomen Sukuna, the King of Curses…redeemed?”

“No such thing ever happened. As someone who also refused redemption, I’m sure you also understand.”

“What makes you think you know anything about me?” Geto asks.

Sukuna says, “If there was a single ray of light left in your soul, that idiot with the blindfold would have seen it and tried to save it.”

“Now you’re definitely talking about stuff that doesn’t concern you.”

He mockingly answers, “What are you going to do about it? You got rolled by Yuta. But who can blame you for not wanting to talk about it? If I declared war on someone and was slain in the first battle, I’d never speak again for the rest of eternity.”

The girl points and says, “Listen, you four-armed freak! I don’t know who you are, or what you’re talking about, but you’re really pissing me off! We were having a good day.”

Sukuna answers, “And who are you?”

“Riko Amanai.”

“I’ve heard of you. The world of the living would be a very different place if you didn’t let some normie blow your brains out.”

Riko lunges at him and starts slapping and finds two of four arms holding her wrists as he lifts her up off the ground. “You shut your mouth! I’ll fight you!”

“Fight me? It’ll be a short fight. I already know you don’t know how to duck,” Sukuna teases.

“I don’t know who you are, but you suck!”

Suguru wraps an arm around Riko’s waist and Sukuna lets her go, although she’s still kicking her arms and legs.

With a rather tired glare, Geto asks, “I assume you didn’t run into us by chance. So why did you come here?”

Sukuna answers, “Have you been here the whole time, or where you still trapped inside your corpse?”

“Huh?”

He finds out that Geto has recently arrived, but has no memories of Kenjaku controlling his body, suggesting that his soul was probably trapped in the body, but maybe dormant due to the wrong brain being in the body. It didn’t matter; the only fact that was relevant was that he didn’t know who Kenjaku was or what was going on in the mortal world. To some extent, Sukuna didn’t really either, outside of the little he knew from living the nightmare once and whatever he overheard through Ryokun’s senses.

Sukuna doesn’t know exactly how it will all play out, if Kenjaku will have Ogami use the technique or if he will kill her and steal it using Reksten’s technique—again, he really wants to know what dumb dipshit let him get into that body.

Actually, he doesn’t want to know. He already knows. It’s Gojo’s fault.

What he does know is that the Culling Games requires Tengen be in some form that can be controlled, and Sukuna can’t think of any way to do that except by using Séance to borrow Cursed Spirit Manipulation.

Sukuna’s understanding of the Séance technique is that it was somehow able to pierce into the spirit world and collect information about a person’s body and abilities, but Toji Fushiguro came in earnest as himself, so there were clearly elements out of the user’s control.

He wondered if Suguru Geto could do something similar, although he wasn’t sure. Despite being kind of equal to Gojo at some point in their teenage years, one of them was the strongest and one of them had a mental breakdown, started a cult, and died.

If Geto could achieve what Fushiguro did and remain at least somewhat sentient, he would be able to resist Kenjaku.

Since Suguru Geto died while trying to kill basically everyone, Sukuna is unsure if ‘let’s not kill everyone’ is a strong selling point. He’s sure there’s exactly one way to very reliably convince Geto to do what he wants.

XXX

So when it all starts, there are parts moving all over the place.

Gojo has his plans for when Kenjaku moves, Kenjaku has his plans, and Sukuna makes a move of his own, knowing Kenjaku is about to Séance Suguru Geto into the world of the living.

Gojo decides to respond to whatever is going on in Tokyo alone; the fact that Tengen’s barriers have fallen is perhaps not as suspicious as the fact that even as he gets dressed and gives Yaga and Gakuganji orders not to let the students come to Tokyo no matter what, his phone doesn’t ring until a senior window manages to get in touch with Yaga to tell him that the Tokyo campus is surrounded by some sort of barrier that is incomprehensible in size.

Because the Shibuya Incident didn’t occur, they hadn’t seen Kenjaku’s big barriers yet.

As Gojo is about to warp to Tokyo, he hesitates and decides that he’ll take Yuji with him. He already knows that Yuji is some crucial instrument in everything that’s going on. More importantly, in the future he came from, he outlived everyone else, so the risk to his life probably isn’t high.

Yuji, who was already dressing because they all got an alert to come to the Kyoto base right away, was a bit disoriented when he was suddenly in Tokyo, still tying one of his shoes when Gojo warped them.

The barrier around the campus is huge, opaque, black, like a hard glass bubble sitting over the campus.

At the edge, a group of Tokyo sorcerers and staff who weren’t on campus when the barrier dropped, and on approach, they discover no one is able to enter, except Yuji, whose hand slides right through the barrier.

According to the sorcerers and staff outside, they thought the only reasonably powerful sorcerer who was on the property at the time the barrier dropped was Kento Nanami.

“Nanami?” Yuji turns to head in.

Gojo reaches out to grab the red hoodie on Yuji’s uniform before he charges in. “You’re not going in there unless I can.”

Satoru isn’t confident that he could break the barrier even if he tried eclipsing it with his domain and doing something like that was a big risk. He could summon his domain multiple times if needed, but presumably, that had also been true in the alternate timeline when he became ‘Legs.’

The fact that he is supposed to be brutally slain soon and still has no idea who will do it or why wears at him increasingly as hours pass in this short time span during which the world was damned in Yuji’s timeline.

Inside of the barrier, Kenjaku inwardly reflects on his luck. He managed to drop the barrier at a moment when only one first grade was present, which gave him time to face Tengen and perform the Séance ritual using a frozen piece of Suguru Geto’s brain.

Due to the fact that Tore Reksten’s body can’t contain an infinite number of techniques the way Geto’s might have, he elected to simply bring Ogami instead of stealing the technique, but he might change his mind.

There’s absolutely nothing standing between him and Tengen.

While Jogo absolutely torches the campus for fun, he takes the elevator shaft to visit an old acquaintance and discovered his luck was actually not very, very good.

It was actually very, very bad.

There is something standing between him and Tengen: Japan’s prodigal monster.

“Yuki Tsukumo.”

“Tore? What’s an upstanding citizen like you doing in a place like this?”

Tengen suddenly appears and says, “It’s not who you think it is. If you met this man in your travels, he has died. His corpse is possessed by a Japanese menace named Kenjaku.”

Tsukumo rolls her eyes. “You always have something to say, lady.”

“He’s dangerous. He has the ability to—”

It’s unexpected that Tsukumo is here, and Kenjaku wasn’t going to let Tengen spoil the secret. Temporal Distortion was a technique that almost guaranteed a kill as long as the opponent didn’t know the secret.

Kenjaku didn’t want to have any big fights himself during this operation, but he happened to drop a lid on the campus when Tsukumo was there, something that seems to have been statistically unlikely, unfair, stupid, and he hates the game for playing him so hard.

With Suguru Geto’s technique, defeating her would have been reasonable, but he really just has Temporal Distortion and an ice ability to use.

And arguably, there is not a single person living on planet earth that Temporal Distortion would be less effective against than Yuki Tsukumo for a very simple reason:

The only natural force that can bend time is gravity.

Kenjaku suspects right away that the trick won’t work on her because she’ll probably be able to understand and counteract it in real time.

Of all the people on earth, it’s only her that could do this, and he has trapped her inside of this barrier.

He tries anyway, and exactly as he expects, Yuki bends distorted time back the other way using gravity and hurls him across the room like he is made from paper.

Kenjaku really feels like the gods are laughing at him again, and like this is some machination of the time traveler. Really, it’s just a coincidence. Yuki Tsukumo came to town recently to continue researching her theory about eliminating cursed energy and had questions for Tengen.

In the other timeline, the siege on Shibuya was international news and she used her ability to speed to Tokyo during the event. During this timeline, she showed up later and for more casual reasons but arrived and wandered into Tengen’s abode where they promptly got into an argument that was interrupted by someone throwing a barrier down that was so powerful that Tengen was cut off from the outside world.

This was only a coincidence in the sense that Yuki also wanted to visit Tengen when no one else was around because people always gave her shit about not working. Especially Gojo. Tsukumo avoided Japan in part because that was where he lived.

Two people trying their best to avoid unnecessary contact with Gojo due to his unpleasantness have met in a most awkward way. But Yuki just doesn’t want to hear that arrogant little shit complain about how lazy she is, and Kenjaku is hoping to avoid being destroyed, so in that respect, they are different.

Kenjaku contemplates trying to put Tsukumo in the Prison Realm, but she won’t be still for one minute and she’s not a delicate person he could trigger in any sort of way. She’s puzzled about who he is, but he knows everything about her. She’s an extremely dangerous player, and it would be bad fortune to run into her under normal circumstances.

Against Tsukumo and Tengen? Very bad odds.

Even if he decided to abort the mission, he assumes dropping a giant barrier has probably summoned that one guy. That had been the plan when he was going to put Gojo in Prison Realm B, but it also means if he wanted to flee that he’d have to get away from Limitless and Gravity Manipulation at special grade level.

Tsukumo’s technique was probably genetically related to Limitless in some way, like maybe in the distant past they branched off the same tree, and there was definitely potential for them to interact in a way that would severely disadvantage Kenjaku.

So, what is he going to do?

Kenjaku searches the memories Tore Reksten has, because Tsukumo clearly ran into Reksten in her travels overseas. Hoping he’d find some hint about how to overcome this misfortune, he only learns Yuki whooped his ass like he was some sort of invertebrate for talking crazy to her in London.

Ogami is somewhere nearby, along with the rest of his ‘staff,’ but they are hired guns, and one thing hired guns are good at is knowing when to cut their losses and run. None of them are going to take unnecessary risks because they’re all old enough to know that this woman would be the most-feared sorcerer if someone else didn’t exist.

Kenjaku frankly doesn’t have the power necessary to defeat her, and while Tengen’s posture seems to suggest she doesn’t want to fight, she would if forced.

Refusing to believe himself to be out of options, he ponders how Tsukumo can counteract the Temporal Distortion ability using gravity, which can also bend time along with everything else.

He imagines two teams playing tug-of-war with a bomb between them. They have to make sure the other team doesn’t get the bomb, but they also have to make sure that they don’t accidentally yank it back too hard and blow it up on themselves. The other team can help this happen by suddenly releasing the rope when the other team is exerting themselves most fully.

Yuki has to use a lot more cursed energy to bend time along with mass compared to Kenjaku who can bend only time, therefore he can probably force her to use her power to blow the bomb up in her own face.

She has him on raw power. Stronger sorcerers like this always overuse their power when they’re mad, or they think their power is enough to overcome a weaker opponent.

Tengen will probably realize and try to warn her, but she won’t listen to Tengen.

Being thirty maybe wasn’t ‘young’ in terms of a normal human lifespan, but it was young compared to Kenjaku.

He makes his play, trying to bend her time, and she counters.

Stuff starts floating, flying towards them as gravity between them starts to distort. The effect gets stronger and stronger, and louder, and he suddenly releases his technique and just like he thought, an explosion hits her with such force the entire Tombs of the Star are cratered and Tengen, Tsukumo, and Kenjaku are all thrown in different directions.

Tsukumo is hurt, but she also becomes the victim of misfortune, because much to Kenjaku’s disbelief, Ogami already used her Séance technique to try and help him and Tsukumo lands disoriented at the feet of Toji Fushiguro, who is holding a blade he took from Kento Nanami’s hands only a minute before because Nanami was unconscious and burned on the ground. He had been unwrapping it when she stumbled across his path.

There’s no hesitation; he doesn’t think about it, it doesn’t matter who she is, no one told him to do anything except to kill sorcerers.

Fushiguro makes a single cut, right into the base of her skull. It happens within one second of her tumbling across his path.

Cursed blade to the brain: game over.

Fushiguro is about to turn his attention to Kenjaku, who points and says, “Satoru Gojo is here.”

He doesn’t know that for certain, but he is around ninety-five percent sure that he is right outside the barrier.

“You’ll probably find him if you go that way.”

Fushiguro seems blank for a moment, and then turns.

And Kenjaku makes his way over to Yuki Tsukumo, whose body is still jerking a little here and there, and he steals the technique before her soul exists her body.

Score! Score, score, score!

Yuki Tsukumo was more powerful than any of the Culling Game players, and this technique is probably one of the most powerful that might have become available to him.

It takes an obscene amount of reverse curse energy to heal the damage just from being close to the explosion, and he knew Tengen was probably bruised too.

More importantly, Tengen knows there aren’t any sorcerers to defend her, so she has made herself scarce.

It doesn’t matter; Tsukumo completely demolished all her defenses in the Tombs of the Star when she blew the place sky high, so it’s not hard to find her.

Kenjaku finds her easily.

“Hello again, Old Friend.”

Tengen says, “We were never friends. We will never be friends. That was cruel.”

“She made a mistake because there aren’t many like her in this world. It’s not like our time, when the world was filled with people like us. Meeting someone like her could be any ordinary Tuesday. And yet, for some reason, I can’t remember what happened to the monsters.”

She answers, “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Perhaps not to you, sequestered in your fortress, dead to the world in so many ways. Incurious, simply existing, watching the world go by, century after century.”

“And what is it that you want?”

Kenjaku answers, “To see what is beyond…I want to see the next era of the world. You already know about it, don’t you? Someone came here from that future. I am certain.”

Tengen shrugs. “If you already figured it out, I suppose there’s no reason to hide it from you. Yes, someone transversed the threads of time. Our insight into that future is incomplete. Imperfect. My question for you is this: why would a person who has come from the future be trying to interfere with your work instead of assisting it?”

Kenjaku gives an equal shrug. “It doesn’t concern me. Personal reasons. The wrong person gets sick and dies, and maybe an ascended sorcerer chose to change time. Can’t you feel it? This world is ready to become something new. Everyone is fighting for the right to decide what that means. The Star Religious Group, Suguru Geto, Satoru Gojo, Yuki Tsukumo…all of us agreeing that the sorcery world is in throes of labor, ready to deliver a new world.”

Tengen answers, “The next era of this world is one where sorcery has failed. Everyone dies, Kenjaku. Ordinary people. Sorcerers. There’s a creature that haunts the visions of the future, a demon that will rule this world and destroy everything in it. If she was a curse user you knew, surely she would have made her debut tonight, which means she is a cursed spirit. Whatever you are trying to do, whatever you are trying to accomplish, you are going to create a curse that transcends the limits of sorcery.”

Sukuna believed that one of the easiest ways for Alghera’s birth to be avoided is for Kenjaku to simply find out that was going to happen.

Kenjaku actually is incredibly discouraged by this information, because he has calculated there is a chance that something like that could happen. A pressure cooker of cursed energy should trigger an evolution in humanity at the right moment, and with the merger, but if the timing was off or Tengen wasn’t present to stabilize the reaction or whatever…

It wasn’t impossible that some horrible curse might be born instead. Kenjaku has determined that there is a five percent chance of this happening, but perhaps twenty percent if he dies before the end of the Culling Game and isn’t there to initiate the merger at the proper moment.

Kenjaku answers, “Good to know. I’ll just have to make sure that doesn’t happen this time.”

But ultimately, he didn’t mind gambling the lives of everyone on earth to get what he wants. Even if the odds were fifty percent achieving his goal, and fifty percent damning the world to destruction, he was still going to do it. The whole world could be his experiment, success or failure.

Farther from them, Toji Fushiguro emerges from the barrier in the direction of the main gate where the other sorcerers have gathered, appearing as a ghost.

Gojo’s blindfold is already off, and he can tell right away that this isn’t actually Toji Fushiguro. It’s the Séance technique of that old lady that stalked him when he was a kid, Madame Ogami, who has been wanted for ages.

He is covered in blood, and he has Kento Nanami’s blade in his hand. The cloth it used to be wrapped with is wrapped around his left fist, and Gojo knows the blood and the fact that he has Nanami’s blade means things probably aren’t going well inside.

He’s also covered in soot, and the barrier has seemingly been ‘breathing,’ sucking in air, indicating there’s a lot of fire going on inside, maybe that curse with the volcano head.

Shoko is inside of the barrier, along with the overnight crew, and a few lower grade sorcerers who lived on campus.

Gojo doesn’t think Nanami would win against Fushiguro at his full strength because both strike at melee range and Fushiguro was just absolute terror in his prime. And not winning against Fushiguro usually meant death; he was a killer, a murderer, someone who struck without hesitation.

Yuji has no idea who this ‘Extra Large Megumi’ is, and he doesn’t care to think about it. As soon as he realizes he’s bloody and has Nanami’s blade, he waits for Gojo to turn and jumps into the barrier even though he knows Gojo doesn’t want him to go in alone.

What’s under the barrier doesn’t look like the campus at all anymore.

Everything is on fire, and the smoke has collected under the tall barrier like storm clouds. It’s incredibly dark outside of the blinding brightness of fires that illuminate only tiny areas, casting everything else in a weird, hellish glow.

There’s a huge crater off to one side where all the main buildings used to be. Massive—maybe eighty meters in diameter and very deep.

Yuji puts his hands to his mouth and shouts, “NANAMIN!”

He shouts and he shouts, and he shouts, waiting for someone to call back as he runs through between buildings looking for him. There were people he passed that were burned so badly that they were scarcely even recognizable as people anymore, just ashen bodies with a look of terror and agony on their faces.

When he first meant Nanami, he had a vision of him being badly burned, but ultimately being killed by Mahito.

A rock hits his head just at the right time, and he ducks behind a stone building, where Shoko is kneeling with Nanami, who is covered nearly head-to-toe in third-degree burns.

Shoko asks, “Did you all find a way in?”

“I think I’m the only one who was able to enter.”

Shoko’s first thought was that if that was really true, Yuji coming in was absolutely the worst possible choice he could have made. It meant Kenjaku wanted to separate him from everyone else for some reason.

“Let me try something.”

Yuji reaches out, and somehow or another, just understands how to simply reshape Nanami into the way he was before. Using Idle Transfiguration, he heals Nanami like none of it ever happened, a miracle even compared to advanced reverse curse technique.

Shoko had heard Yuji ate a curse with some weird body-changing abilities, but she hadn’t heard he’d gained any ability from it.

Yuji himself had actually never done this before, but his heart was pounding, and he felt powerfully compelled to use whatever he could to help Nanami.

Nanami is still asleep, probably due to the shock and mental trauma or exhaustion to his body.

Shoko says, “Listen, Yuji. If you can come and go from the barrier, you should go. I’ll hide with Nanami until the situation improves. Kenjaku is definitely here, in addition to at least four other curse users, and two special grade curses. Nanami was the most powerful guy on the inside, and he’s down. There were some second grades that tried to do something to the volcano curse, but they’re all gone.”

Yuji answers, “I’m not leaving you. You can’t fight, right?”

“That’s not the question. The fact that no one else can enter or leave except you means that the person who put this barrier up wants you to be here on the inside, isolated from other sorcerers. Look at me, Yuji. Sometimes we win by defeating the enemy, and sometimes we win by not letting them have what they want.”

Yuji listens but says, “We can win by beating them up though, right? I’m good at that.”

“Yuji, I understand that you are being raised in the world of sorcery by an idiot, but I need you to not be an idiot right now.”

“I’m not leaving you, Ms. Shoko. I think if I leave you two in here that I’ll never see you again, and that’s not going to happen. There are people that we can save in here, and I’m not going to give up on them.”

Shoko sighs. “Your elders don’t want you to die for them. There was another powerful sorcerer here. Not someone you know. Someone stronger than Yuta. She already bit the big one.”

Yuji says, “There’s fresh air being sucked in near the edge of the barrier. Let’s take Nanami there, and I’ll look for more survivors and bring them to you. If I get into a fight, don’t worry. I’m tough.”

Even though Shoko wanted to blame Gojo for this, she knew even Gojo knew when to cut his losses and make a difficult decision. Yuji? He seems so light, accepting that he was willingly choosing a path where survival was directly through hell.

With his newfound ability, he could heal people who were perhaps beyond reverse curse technique, and quickly, so maybe it wasn’t unrealistic for Yuji to think he could save some people. What was unrealistic was believing their enemies might let them do this.

Still, he is the one with the power in this situation, and he throws Nanami up on his shoulder and starts running and her choice is to follow him or stay put, so she follows.

Finding a nice spot close to the barrier, there is a little more air, and they have decent cover, so he puts Nanami down on the ground and runs back between the buildings to find any survivors.

He manages to bring five back to Shoko and feels in some way that his endless, gory visions helped him function normally, seeing people he had met before burned to death.

Suddenly, a deep voice calls to him.

“The young sorcerer with pink hair. You’re the one who slew my brother, Mahito.”

Yuji knows this creature just nearly burned Nanami to death and takes a fighting stance. “You hurt my friend, Nanami. So there’s no reason for us to talk about anything. It’s time for you to leave.”

“You think you can defeat me? How arrogant, that you would underestimate the power of curses.”

Yuji flexes his fists, and at the instant that his eyes turned blood red, a second set of red eyes appeared at the tops of his cheekbones. “If you understood the kind of power that I have, you would run.”

Jogo attacks him, and they begin a fight in earnest, and Yuji feels so light on his feet, and so familiar; he’s sure this battle has happened before.

While they fight, he kites Jogo and grabs someone off the ground, maybe throwing them a bit unceremoniously in Shoko’s direction, but he can’t do what he’s going to do with anyone around who might still be able to be saved.

Jogo burns him, and it doesn’t matter; he has nearly infinite reverse curse technique and doesn’t even have to use it because Idle Transfiguration—which he doesn’t even know the proper name of—allows him to continually rearrange himself back the way he goes.

Shoko watches him from around a corner, stunned at how powerful he is, and how he seems to be flying everywhere, like someone who has been in a thousand fights, every one of them at the risk of death.

She would swear that he’s getting bigger somehow, as the fight progresses, and he clears survivors out of the area that they are crashing through, sending slicing attacks through the campus and wrecking the already burning buildings.

When Yuji starts to feel tightness in his jacket, he simply rips it off and continues shirtless, considering that oddly, he felt better that way for some reason.

Yuji brought something back from the future; maybe unintentionally.

Since he absorbed Mahito, he has discovered that the shape of his soul is somehow warped out of it’s true shape. Something else used to be inside of him, and it left behind an imprint not entirely unlike a fossil, but inside of his soul. He didn’t understand what it was or why it was inside of him, but he understood that whatever it was, it was deeply evil.

But this fossil was somehow very much like him; not him, but similar, and if he considered its shape, he could understand things about himself too, about his power, about who he was. He was young, and didn’t know how to hold his power in his body, but if he simply changed his body into that shape…in that shape, all of his power could flow out freely.

And so, he transfigured his body using Mahito’s technique into the shape of Ryomen Sukuna.

Black marks spread across his body as he sailed through the air after Jogo. And then, bizarrely, a second set of arms.

The next time he strikes a very confused Jogo, he sends him flying so far that he hits the barrier. Yuji sees a thousand flashes, of Shibuya, of moments after, of Sukuna using his domain expansion, from his body, of Yuji using his own later, of how similar they were.

This other person was like him, but not him.

Gojo told him that becoming a sorcerer was like being given, one time only, a giant bag of Lego bricks and being told to build something with it. Of course, at first, a sorcerer could put only the most basic structures together. A simple house. But over time, they would repurpose this and that, until the bricks were in the best layout that person was capable of assembling.

Yuji had up to that point little hints about how to layout his bricks.

Using Idle Transfiguration to assume the secret imprint left in his soul was like unpacking a blueprint for a perfect killer and snapping all the bricks into place. He had almost the same bricks as the person who left the blueprint, so it worked.

While the situation in Tokyo is tense, the students are all awake and together in Kyoto, awaiting instructions.

The students are the only ones that Gojo said not to deploy to Tokyo, so the Elders, who were not present at HQ, are pulling out all the stops, calling the top clans to respond to the situation as quickly as they can.

Some of the fighters in the Gojo clan are going; some are staying.

It’s a rather hazy night as Uraume watches the Gojo clans estate from the branches of the demon tree.

With Gojo gone and everyone paying attention to a crisis unfolding elsewhere, she descends from the tree.

Uraume makes the air closer to the ground considerably colder, which causes a thick cloud of fog of nearly no visibility as she makes her way to Satoru Gojo’s house, the place where Ryu Itadori usually stays when Yuji is unable to take care of him.

Through a second floor window, she gains entry to the youngest Itadori with nearly no effort.

Ryukun awakens to someone climbing through his window, and even though he’s been taught about stranger danger, this isn’t a stranger. It’s Uraume! He doesn’t remember many of the details, but she is a friend and he is happy to see her. It’s great for a friend to come visit, and coming through the window seems incredibly cool.

Uraume noted that the toddler seemed partial to her at their first meeting, even seeming extra hurt that she was the one responsible for his injury. When she raises a finger to her lips, and says, “Shhhhhh,” he is happy to keep the secret.

He’s wearing teddy bear character pajamas with a little hood with teddy bear ears and little paws for feet.

Really, the Young Master is quite cute like this.

Kenjaku assured her that they could restore him to whatever he was before, since neither of them can exactly remember.

Uraume assumes that whatever he was before, he wasn’t nearly adorable as this happy little boy dressed up as a teddy bear.

She has a moment of hesitation but decides it’s too late to change her mind.

Uraume gives him a big red gummy candy from a zipper bag in one of her kimono pockets, and he eagerly opens it, whispering very quickly all kinds of questions.

Where did she come from? Were they going to play? Did she know where they were friends from? Did they meet at Daycare?

Then, his eyes became heavy from the sedative, and he went limp, allowing her to simply lay him on the floor.

Chiyo Gojo is awake, downstairs with tea and book while she waits for Gojo to return home. Since she isn’t a trained fighter and Uraume is very good at hiding her presence and moving silently, she never hears, and Uraume arranges the pillows and covers so that if she walks past, it’ll look like he’s sound asleep.

Then, she tucks Ryokun under one arm, and silently exits, sliding the window closed behind her.

She carries him through a secret tunnel with an entrance in the nearby gardens to an evacuation point intended to save non-combatants if the clan is attacked.

After handing him off to a man, she returns through the tunnel for the bigger gamble: Ingrid Reksten.

Getting to her is much easier, since Satoru Gojo has stashed her in a pretty remote part of the estate and very few people know what’s going on in that house.

Ingrid is already awake, having just finished a middle-of-the-night bathroom break, frequent in her third trimester, when she heard someone call her name.

“Ingrid, I have come with a message from your brother, Tore,” she calls.

She peeks around the corner. “Who are you?”

“I have come to rescue you.”

Kenjaku believes the Gojo clan did not tell this woman her brother had died, and an imposter had possessed him because if she really knew how grim recent developments were, she’d probably kill herself and the baby.

And he is exactly right.

Uraume plays a video on her phone that Kenjaku recorded in Ingrid’s native tongue, a task made simple by the fact that he could access Tore’s memories. He knew her nickname, referenced things only he would have known, made her feel absolute confidence in him, and confidence in the fact that he had finally sent someone to save her from her imprisonment.

Kenjaku told her lies in the video, that he had only left her there so she’d be safe while he took care of everything. He told her that their clan was safe and sound and that he’d settled up with their enemies and that after they escaped, they would go back to their home country, where she could have the baby and complete her great favor to him.

This was all false; Tore was dead, their clan was dead, and there was nothing beyond these walls but death.

But Ingrid wanted to believe it and wanted to reassure herself that this family that had treated her like a villain would soon be a distant memory.

So she disappears into the fog outside with Uraume a few minutes later, and then sneaks quietly down the evacuation tunnel to freedom on the other side of the wall.

The driver helps her to the car, where Ryokun is unconscious and drooling in the back seat, hands and feet and mouth taped.

Uraume knocks her out with a single hit to the back of her head before helping the driver tape her up.

Just like that, Kenjaku scores two of his goals without the slightest complication whatsoever.

Kenjaku is not aware of this because inside of the barrier, there are two massive battles taking place: between him and Tengen, and Yuji Itadori and the two special grades.

The curse users have other objectives, with two trusted with collecting certain artifacts from secure storage now that basically every security measure has been disrupted.

Haruta Shigemo’s job is to make sure that no one survives, and with three stripes under his eyes, makes his way over to Shoko’s group, which consists of wounded survivors who are yet unable to leave the barrier.

The ones in immediate danger of death have been saved, and Yuji hadn’t brought anyone else back in awhile, which meant that there were perhaps only eleven survivors, a grim and terrible reality. Then again, he was far from them at that point, brawling with the special grade curses, two against one, in that strange four-armed form.

Shigemo, clutching his hand-sword in one hand and covering his mouth to laugh with the other, says, “Look at all of you.”

Nanami is the only fighter there, and while he has been healed, he hasn’t regained consciousness, and there’s no promise that he’d be able to fight even if he did wake up right then. The fact that that terrifying ghost carried off his blade is also a problem.

Shoko only has reverse curse technique, and while she might be able to get a low grade cursed spirit off her back, there’s not much she can do about a curse user.

Growing up as a sorcerer alongside two generational monsters, Shoko rarely had to break a nail. Before anyone could even glance at her, something remarkably terrible would happen to them.

But they aren’t here for her now.

Is this her fate? To be slain by some low-grade idiot and his disgusting weapon?

No.

As Haruta approaches, he says, “The sight of women honestly just ruins my day. How ugly.”

Shoko reaches under her skirt, where she keeps her Last Resort, a powerful, high-caliber handgun she secretly carries. The first three shots somehow miss, inexplicably, but the next seven hit, two in his head, three in his chest and neck.

When he falls dead to the ground she sits back down on the ground, lights a cigarette, and asks, “Who’s ugly now, huh?”

She hears a voice say, “It seems like there’s enough smoke around here.”

Kento Nanami sits up, incredibly disoriented, having been awoken by the gunshots. He’s sure he was brutally burned the last thing he remembered, but now he’s fine. Tired, but fine.

“What’s the situation?”

Shoko sighs, “Well, apparently Yuki Tsukumo was under the barrier when it dropped.”

“Tsukumo? Seriously? What a relief….”

“Why is that a relief? That woman already got wasted. It’s just like her to show up and die at the beginning of the battle. There is nothing lazier than punching your card early in a life or death battle where other people are relying on you to actually do your job for once.”

Nanami takes in the news that Tsukumo was there, but apparently was killed, and at least internally, kind of agrees with Shoko that this is the kind of lazy shit that woman always pulled when she showed up.

Shoko adds in her characteristic monotone, “We may be the only survivors besides Tengen, who is battling Kenjaku, who seems to now have Tsukumo’s technique. Additionally, there are other curse users. Two around the repositories, one I shot full of holes, and one that’s hiding right now. There are also two special grade curses here, who are currently sparring with that enormous four-armed monster, who is actually Yuji Itadori. Also, the ghost of Toji Fushiguro picked up your blade and carried it off.”

After hearing this, Kento asks, “Do you have another cigarette?”

Shoko puts the cigarette between his lips and lights it before reloading her gun.

“Where did you get a gun?”

“That dumbass Gojo gave it to me. He said I might need it someday, but you know how he thinks he knows everything.”

They strategize; they know from Yuji that Gojo and others are right outside the barrier, and Gojo’s introduction to this situation would change everything.

Nanami lacks domain amplification and expansion, so it probably isn’t possible for him to meaningfully join one of the massively destructive battles going on at the moment. Shoko believes that Fushiguro’s ghost was able to leave the barrier and that Gojo therefore probably got it right away, but that its existence was probably caused by Madam Ogami, one of the most wanted curse users in Japan.

Considering that Kenjaku brought her to this place instead of the ice user seen at other events, Shoko theorized that she was supposed to play some role beyond just causing violence, and therefore, she and Nanami decided that if he could eliminate Ogami, he might be able to accomplish something.

Going after the curse users that appeared to be going after stuff was not a meaningful risk of life at the moment.

Nanami picked up Shigemo’s blade, cringing at how absolutely disgusting it actually was to wield. Kento didn’t even hold hands with girlfriends in public, after all. Still, his blade is missing in action, and it is cursed. He isn’t practiced with the sword, but the grip is forgiving.

She stabs Shigemo in the head with it several times since he was killed by a non-cursed weapon and therefore could come back as a vengeful spirit, and piercing his brain with the cursed sword would stop that from happening.

Then he wanders deeper into the campus, looking for the old woman.

The campus is quite huge, and Yuji’s battle seems to be getting increasingly far away; he thinks all three parties involved want to stay away from the Tengen and Kenjaku battle, which is causing all sorts of weird things to happen. Rocks and trees are floating and being tossed around by gravitational waves.

When he finds the old lady, she is uncomfortably close to Kenjaku’s battle and quite dead already.

Kenjaku had taken the technique from her in the middle of his battle because she was unable to release Toji Fushiguro and summon Suguru Geto. He had a finite amount of time, and he needed to make his move.

The only problem was that since her host had run off outside the barrier, he needed a host for Suguru Geto. He probably couldn’t use just anyone because of how strong Geto was, but in some bizarre stroke of luck, a first grade sorcerer just sort of stumbled into his periphery.

Kenjaku pummels Nanami using Temporal Distortion and Gravity Manipulation, and then suspends him on a ball of gravitational energy that has him bent backwards in an arch, unable to move.

He chants and Nanami feels intense dread as his mouth is forcibly pried open and something strange, a piece of Suguru Geto’s brain, is dropped inside.

‘Don’t ever eat anything that’s not food,’ is one of those sorcery adages that everyone learns early on. Eating is a primary vector for all kinds of curses, possessions, etc.,

Nanami thinks if he doesn’t swallow, it’ll be enough, but merely having whatever the weird, salty item was in his mouth was enough, and the curse took hold.

This time, in the hands of a more powerful curse user, it worked as intended and Nanami’s looks didn’t change much.

Eyes dimmed by Séance, he’s released from the gravitational orb.

Tengen is tired, unable to defend against an onslaught any further. Her abilities are enormous but geared toward supporting other sorcerers. She’s actually not much in a one-on-one battle compared to Kenjaku in his current state with Gravity Manipulation.

Kenjaku says, “Use your technique to turn this curse into nymph form. Do you know how to do that?”

“Yes.”

Geto barely feels half-awake, his vision a strange blur.

Somehow, he knows Nanami just from his hands; this body is precious, he can’t let it be killed.

He’s unable to resist the orders of his summoner.

But it’s okay, because they knew this might happen.

Geto stretches Nanami’s hand out and begins to suck Tengen up into a big ball that he would have swallowed in his ordinary body back when he had a body.

Tengen, in fetal form, is dormant inside the little glowing ball in his hands.

Kenjaku says, “Give it to me.”

Suguru fights as hard as he can as his hands move on their own, and at the last second before the ball rolls into Kenjaku’s grasp, Suguru manages to close his fist around the orb and breaks it.

Suguru Geto has instantly killed both Tengen as well as every hope Kenjaku ever had of seeing humanity evolved into its optimized form.

He didn’t do it to save the world or avoid the Culling Game or anything like that.

He did it because Sukuna told him in the other timeline, where Kenjaku got to carry out his plan, Gojo died very soon, in mere weeks, and left an unborn child, who lived a short life and was killed young by Kenjaku’s monster.

Sukuna did not specify how Gojo died, only that it happened.

In the same way that Kenjaku tried to use Suguru against Satoru, Sukuna just did the opposite from beyond the grave using Satoru against Suguru, pulling at a friendship that had been separated by death.

Suguru choose death and destruction for himself, and he didn’t really regret any of it.

But for Satoru, he chose life.

His time was over, but he wanted his one and only friend to live on and find happiness with his students and his dreams and his family.

Like Sukuna, in the end, he wasn’t sorry about anything rotten he did. There was no desire to save the world, it just happened to be the place where his one friend lived.

Kenjaku just stares, blank.

Blank.

There are no words to explain the devastation of Tengen just…dying.

It should have been impossible in her normal form, and in her tiny form, he knew she would have to be protected. He would have protected her. He needed her.

Kenjaku’s mind races.

Can he steal her technique? No, Tengen is more curse than person; that’s why he needed Cursed Spirit Manipulation. Can he use Séance? No, again, not a human anymore. And whose fault was that? His—because he was the one pulling the strings at the Star Religious Group to ensure that she transitioned into a curse.

All of that was just so he could control her using Cursed Spirit Manipulation.

He played the long game; separated the sorcerer from the Jujutsu Society, pulled him further and further and further. When it was time, took the body and technique, all according to plan.

Tengen is—was—a one-of-a-kind being, built over a thousand years using over a dozen star plasma vessels.

It would be impossible for another one like her to exist, ever.

There is no path forward without Tengen.

No Culling Game.

Ever.

Nanami’s body runs out of cursed energy from having Cursed Spirit Manipulation in his body, and the technique releases, causing him to crumble to the ground.

Kenjaku thinks about how if he had turned away when Tengen told him the Culling Game might have devastating consequences, the door still would have been open.

Did it happen because of hubris?

Did he fuck around with Suguru Geto just a little too much?

Was it the goddamned time traveler?

On the outside of the barrier, Gojo has just returned from a warp errand to retrieve something that also reminds him of Toji Fushiguro, who erupted from the barrier and was promptly beaten up by a now-adult Gojo.

This whole situation is the pits, and he has no idea about anything that’s going on inside the barrier except that the earth keeps shaking. The Fushiguro ghost that emerged had Nanami’s blade and was bloodied, so Gojo believes that Nanami may have met a rough end.

Yuji is also inside, and Gojo swears he’s going to beat his ass once he rescues him.

He stabs the Inverted Spear of Heaven into the barrier, causing it to crack and then shatter, and just as the other sorcerers are about to rush in, Gojo extends his hand.

“STOP! Don’t move!” Gojo shouts.

Yuji is mid-air, leaping toward Jogo as he brings his hands together.

Gojo does a lightning-fast scan and at the maximum speed he can move, zips Kento Nanami off out of the way.

He’s not sure what the hell happened to his student, but the bad vibes emanating from him are kind of scary.

Yuji middle and index fingers touch.

“Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine.”

Kenjaku sees Nanami seemingly vanish, and also feels an incredibly intense sense of dread as he looks up.

Itadori is over seventy meters away, so there’s no reason to be worried.

Executing a domain expansion was always a risk; the cursed spirits had to be careful about exhausting their cursed technique because there were, of course, sorcerers outside, and a technique was necessary for any sort of escape. Using a domain expansion in the middle of an ongoing battle was usually only a good idea if one could retire from the battle or if one was confident that using it would end the battle.

Yuji feels power surging through him as the domain opens, sending cleave and dismantle attacks throughout an expanse of space a hundred and fifty meters in diameter and a fifty meters in height.

There’s no barrier; it’s not contained in a space.

Even for an ally, it’s simply terrifying to watch as everything inside of the barrier is simply sliced until it doesn’t exist anymore.

Gojo can tell the special grades immediately try to defend with their own domains, and then their presences vanish.

Kenjaku gets caught in it too, but he’s able to use Gravity Manipulation to catapult himself out of the domain since it doesn’t have a barrier, and then heal his sliced-up body as blood gushes from everywhere.

While he’s healing and Yuji’s domain is still open, he’s almost pushed back in by a punch to the back by Gojo.

When Kenjaku puts his hands out to brace himself, they touch Yuji’s domain and are instantly cut off.

Gojo thinks Kenjaku is on the ropes, but in an instant, Kenjaku rockets back toward him, throws the Prison Realm B he gained from absorbing Yorozu’s power and exhausting it with a binding vow, and fully distorts Gojo’s time.

Since the Prison Realm nullifies cursed techniques as soon as it touches someone, he snatches the Inverted Spear of Heaven and realizes he could literally just stick it directly into Gojo’s brain and be done with this whole Gojo mess. He can’t move fast enough to stop him.

Yuji suddenly emerges from the domain expansion as it closes and lands hands-first on the blade before it goes into Gojo’s skull.

This cuts both his hands off and nullifies all his current techniques, causing him to suddenly revert back to his normal form with no technique at all for a few seconds.

Gojo disappears suddenly, and the metal box on the ground is covered in glowing blue eyes.

Kenjaku wanted to also capture Yuji in some sort of way, but he is obviously too dangerous. He decides it is time to cut his losses, take his wins, and flee with Gojo, but…

When he tries to pick up the Prison Realm B, he can’t.

Yuji grapples with Kenjaku over the Inverted Spear of Heaven, whose aura messes with both of them quite a bit. Kenjaku is surprised the person using it can also be affected, but this obviously didn’t apply to Toji Fushiguro since he didn’t have cursed energy.

Kenjaku is surprised by how incredibly physically powerful this kid is even without cursed energy. Tore Reksten’s body is actually very normal, so with both their techniques being affected, and Yuji is somehow getting by just using the stumps of his hands and his legs.

Yuji manages to kick the sword out of the way, and as soon as his cursed energy normalizes, he starts launching attacks at Kenjaku, who tries to pick up Prison Realm B again and fails again.

He knows he will have to abandon it because the other sorcerers are going to arrive in mere seconds, and considering the time they had on the outside, they probably have a plan.

Kenjaku rockets away using a burst of gravity, at a speed so fast that only Gojo could have caught him.

But he can’t, because he’s still in the Prison Realm, on the ground.

They’re not able to let Gojo out while the technique is still not complete, and when Shoko makes it to Yuji, she gives him orders to keep the sword and the cube close and not to let either out of his sight no matter what happens or who tells him otherwise.

No sooner has she given this order than the Elders, who were inexplicably invisible up to this moment, started talking about wanting to take the cube to be studied before releasing Gojo and collecting the Inverted Spear of Heaven since it was technically used in an attempted assassination of a sorcerer and should have been in custody of the Jujutsu Society.

Yuji understands the interest in these items is their ability to cause problems for Gojo, and he has no intention of letting anyone take advantage of the situation.

“We’ll just wait for Gojo. He probably wants to get in on the action,” Yuji insists.

Nobody presses it further, scurrying around like they’re scared of him which is kind of weird.

Yuji’s domain expansion put out most of the fires, but it also left much of the core area of the campus look like someone a space larger than a soccer field through a food processor.

Actually, terrifying.

Objectively.

Once the blue eyes on Prison Realm B finally disappear, Yuji strikes it with the Inverted Spear of Heaven, and Gojo came out looking a bit disoriented.

Satoru dusted himself off. “Well, that was embarrassing. Is it over?”

“He got away again.”

“Dammit. Was I hallucinating, or did I see a brief flash of you with four arms and tattoos all over your face?”

“That’s a long story.”

Gojo says, “That domain was scary, Yuji. Where did you learn that?”

Yuji scratches his head. “So…I think maybe, at some point, I ran into someone who was like…the evil version of me? And for some reason he was inside of my body.”

“That is incredibly dark and very scary, Yuji.”

Satoru feels like he contributed basically nothing to this catastrophic event, which has left the Tokyo campus entirely in ruins. There isn’t a single building still standing, with the most central area left a crater.

There weren’t many on campus at the time the barrier dropped, but there are still twenty-four people unaccounted for who probably aren’t going to be found. Between the special grade curses, and Malevolent Shrine, pretty much everything has been obliterated.

That said, Yuji and Shoko were able to save the members of the Jujutsu Society that were still alive when he entered the barrier.

Nanami doesn’t have any memories of what happened during the time Séance was used on him, but the last thing he heard before blacking out was Suguru Geto’s name being called.

The entire zone is a soup of layered residue: the crab special grade that flooded areas or splashed water with Jogo’s fire to create steam explosions, residue from Jogo’s flames, a massive area contaminated by Yuki Tsukumo’s technique, patches where Temporal Distortion was used, piles of residue from the domain expansion, and signs that Cursed Spirit Manipulation was indeed activated.

As victims are tended to, the most important question becomes ‘where is Tengen?’

Gojo didn’t sense her when he swept in to move Nanami out at the last second before Yuji’s domain expansion. Did she flee? Was she taken?

He finds…something.

It looks like a fetus from a baby book he’s been reading, except smooshed.

Definitely Tengen.

Definitely dead.

When Suguru Geto captured a cursed spirit, he caused it to enter a nymph state, sort of like a larva or a tiny, undeveloped version of itself. He would swallow them in this form, and they’d be trapped in suspended animation in this state.

Since Tengen was more curse than person, it appeared this might work on her. It also seemed like Suguru’s technique played a large role in Kenjaku’s schemes all along. Using Séance to gain access to it one more time was nasty work, but it looked like something went wrong.

Tengen wasn’t that tough of a fight, and if he wanted to kill her, there were ways to do it that didn’t require Geto’s technique. It seemed like Kenjaku probably wanted to gain access to her power for some reason. There were probably a lot of very bad things one could do with Tengen’s if she was in this state.

Gojo wondered if Kenjaku ordered Suguru’s soul to turn Tengen into this fetus and give her to him and Suguru killed her instead to keep her out of Kenjaku’s hands.

The idea of Suguru maybe saving the world after the fact is oddly comforting, but he knows there’s no proof.

Some fingers are pointed that Yuji might have killed potential survivors, and Gojo very quickly unpoints them because he would have been able to tell if there were others and the only one that he sensed apart from the group with Shoko was Nanami, who he saved.

Yuji definitely washed the other two special grades, at least one curse user. Shoko killed one with a gun. One was killed by Gojo for wearing the visage of Toji Fushiguro that made him think unhappy thoughts.

The building where the higher-ups used to bitch at Gojo for being a political menace is cut up so completely that there isn’t a piece of rebar, concrete, or wood larger than a Scrabble tile, and as the Elders survey the damage, they seem a bit pale because it was even nastier than anything they’d seen Gojo do.

Certainly, he probably could do destructive things well beyond this, but actually seeing this sort of act left them with facts to consider.

It was also worth noting that Tokyo had been weak to this attack because they tried to compartmentalize the Gojo faction in Kyoto. Their strategy of having plenty of weaker, easier to manage second grades did not do much for them.

Since Tengen had founded the Jujutsu Society, it had never operated without her, and no one really knew what was going to happen now that she was dead, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.

While being interrogated like he did something wrong by one of the Elders, Kento Nanami abruptly tells the elder that ‘work is shit’ and he’s going on vacation to Malaysia and doesn’t want anyone to talk to him for six months.

In front of the others as they continue to deal with the fallout, Gojo is a bit puffed up with pride at his student, who bravely marched in alone to save his allies and stood up to the attackers, defeating them in a rather aggressive show of power.

But privately, Gojo punched him quite hard in the back. “Don’t do that again. Don’t go to a place that I can’t reach you if you need help. That’s not what we do here.”

“I’m sorry. It was just…it was Nanami.”

His phone rings, his wife, and he ignores it.

She calls again, and he ignores it again.

When she calls a third time, he wonders if there’s some kind of emergency? It would be strange for her to be the one calling about it.

“Babe, sorry, it’s tense right now. Is there an emergency?”

Chiyo says, “Ryokun is gone.”

He stops walking.

She’s in the guest room where he usually sleeps, where she went to check on him, and found pillows and blankets arranged to look like he was still in bed.

“There’s residue in here. A stranger. They came in through the window. I was downstairs reading. You know he’s a noisy little guy. If someone snatched him, he’d bite, yell, fight. He’s stronger than he looks. I didn’t hear anything.”

Gojo realizes that they didn’t see Kenjaku’s most adept human associate at this event…the one that tried to kidnap Ryokun before. And, the one he seemingly recognized for some reason.

Was she able to trespass without being caught?

If Kenjaku had reach at the Gojo clan estate and Tore Reksten’s body, there was a very obvious opportunity there.

Panicking, he says, “I need you to do something for me. Head to Sakura Cottage and see if Ingrid is still there.”

He hears the door fly open and can hear her running up the path at night, and then a thud and the sound of the phone being dropped.

“Sorry, I’m clumsy…I’m so clumsy…this is my fault…” she says, choking back tears.

Gojo answers, “Whatever happened, it is definitely not your fault.”

When she gets to the house, he hears the door bang as she throws it open and calls for Ingrid.

“That residue is here. She’s gone.”

“Shit.”

Yuji can tell that whatever Gojo is talking about, he is getting bad news. He doesn’t know anything about Sakura Cottage or what’s been going on there.

Gojo hangs up and says, “Change of plans.”

Chapter Text

The thing is that Yuji didn’t ask for a little brother.

Didn’t expect one.

Resisted the idea at first, although not for long.

Now, Yuji can’t imagine his life without Ryokun, and finds himself unable to think, sleep, and at times, breathe, when he thinks about him. He feels like an elephant is standing on his chest, and he’s frantic, but after one whole week, they still don’t know where Ryokun is.

Yuji really thought that maybe they’d break the dark curse of the future, but it seemed inescapable.

People still died.

There was nothing left of the Tokyo base at all. Just two huge craters, surrounded by a few ashen ruins. Yuji had met some of the people who died before they were moved to Kyoto, and it’s hard to believe they’re just…gone.

The fact that they are gone, only serves to remind Yuji every single second that Kenjaku is a killer, and if he took Ryokun in order to steal his technique, there was never any reason to keep him alive. He can’t allow the thought to take root, yet in the back of his mind, it is constantly there.

Kento Nanami postponed his sabbatical so that he could stay with Yuji, because while no one was going to talk about it with him, everyone else had quietly acknowledged that Kenjaku probably killed Ryokun right away and this search will end in a field, or at a dumpster, or in an apartment surrounded by crime scene tape, or maybe not at all.

Sometimes people who went missing were never seen again, leaving their loved ones with a drop of false hope in a sea of grief.

Gojo decided not to tell anyone about the second hostage, because Ingrid was certainly with Ryokun, and with the baby’s life in danger, it was even more important for him to protect her identity.

Yuji’s domain still had everyone scared a bit shitless, because when he walked away from that battlefield, there was nothing left. Where Gojo’s domain destroyed minds, Yuji’s domain destroyed everything indiscriminately.

A scary detail about that event was that when he closed the domain, he was still using his technique when he attacked Kenjaku, which meant that display of pure terror didn’t burn his technique out.

Without Tengen, and having sustained incredible losses, the Jujutsu Society is clearly about to go through an evolution of some kind, but the people with the most to gain are more concerned with other things.

And so, Nanami brings Yuji, with red, puffy eyes after a week of sleeping a few minutes here or there in a car, another coffee so they can continue their search.

Yuji sits in the back seat of the car, and he worries, and he’s scared.

“Ryokun never sleeps by himself. He’s probably so frightened. He’s just a tiny kid, and he doesn’t have parents or anything. I mean, we were doing our best, and I think that was okay, wasn’t it?” he asks.

Nanami answers, “You have always taken the finest care of him, Yuji.”

Yuji says, “I just wish I could tell him everything was going to be okay.”

But what if the worst had already happened?

The idea of it made Yuji literally feel sick, like he might die, just thinking about how scared and desperate he would have been, probably crying for his big bro, who wasn’t there.

He can’t bear it.

Gojo is simultaneously privately struggling with the idea that his child may have already come and gone from the world, having never known anything but the cruelty of a monster.

Neither Satoru nor Yuji nor any of their closest allies have slept well or relented in their search after one week despite having found not even something remotely resembling a lead. Everyone is looking for Ryokun, without knowing that they’re also looking for a baby Gojo who is in even more danger.

In a safehouse out in the country in some in-between place, the atmosphere in Kenjaku’s group is just as grim, as they all cope with the realities of the current situation.

On the first night, after the raid, Kenjaku didn’t see any reason to continue lying to Ingrid Reksten and simply told her the truth: that her brother’s brain was functionally destroyed by Satoru Gojo on the night she was caught, and that he’d killed Tore and taken his body. Also, he told her that her entire clan had been killed by the French clan that they’d pissed off.

There was nothing left for her, no path forward, and while she might have been able to ask Satoru Gojo for leniency, leaving his protection willingly only ensured that Kenjaku would kill her and her baby.

As they sit for breakfast on the eighth day, she has distinct bruising around her neck because she tried to hang herself the day before in order to deprive Kenjaku of his prize.

Breakfast is not great, as Uraume, usually a wizard in the kitchen, has prepared a meal without heart or interest because Kenjaku finally told her the day before that Ryokun is definitely just a kid, and not some sort of monster trapped in a little body. His theory is that the Forgotten Monster has been dead all along and the little boy might be his reincarnation.

And this isn’t the only setback of the last week.

Juzo ‘Coatrack’ Kamiya managed to complete his mission and collect three Death Paintings from the Tokyo campus amidst the chaos, but ultimately, chose to abandon Kenjaku because he saw Yuji’s domain and became terrified of the Jujutsu Society.

Kenjaku was so worried about Kamiya’s sudden change of heart that he killed him out of concerns that he might go to the Jujutsu Society in order to ensure his own survival.

Then, desperate to bolster his numbers, Kenjaku incarnated the three Death Paintings only to have them immediately decide that they wouldn’t serve him unless they had something to gain from it. They clearly didn’t, and after trying to force them to serve him, a fight broke out and he and Uraume killed two of the three of them.

Choso ran off, wounded.

Kenjaku has no idea if Choso actually survived, but he was worried that somehow or another, he might meet his other brother out in the world, so they moved to their current location.

After the meal, Uraume takes Ryokun into the living room, where they have a few toys.

One thing that Kenjaku has learned is that if there’s anything three rapidly decompensating adults need more than anything, it’s a disagreeable, noisy toddler who screams and bites. Their time with him has been unpleasant, and whatever goodwill he might have had initially for Uraume has evaporated because the only thing he wants is to go home to Yuji.

So the real question is why hasn’t Kenjaku killed his hostages and collected their techniques?

With Ryokun, it’s actually quite simple. Uraume might know now that she can’t be with her master, but she’s still going to defend him with her life, and the moment that Kenjaku moves to kill Ryokun, he will also have to kill Uraume.

She will die protecting the little boy, and it probably won’t make any difference. Uraume’s opinion about what he wants to do won’t change the outcome of anything.

Kenjaku and Uraume have both accepted this reality.

As for why Ingrid Reksten is still alive, the situation is different.

Kenjaku isn’t Gojo, and he has no idea what technique the baby has, or if it definitely even has one. Gojo didn’t tell Ingrid anything he could see with Six Eyes, and she doesn’t know anything about her baby, only that her due date is in three weeks on January 7.

The prevailing fear is that there is a small chance that the baby will be born with Limitless, and while that would be wonderful in the sense that there’s no technique Kenjaku wants to have more, it also seems possible that the baby will be like a little homing beacon once it is born.

It seems very reasonable to suspect that Gojo would be able to see the baby from much further away than other people if it’s born with the same technique as him and is also a member of the Six Eyes bloodline.

In other words, Kenjaku is concerned that when the baby is born, Gojo will be summoned.

And certainly, the most important thing they are doing is hiding from Satoru Gojo.

Kenjaku is accustomed to staying in the shadows, but hiding? HIDING? Always a strategic player and never a coward, he has never been forced to shrink in the shadows like he is at this moment.

Since the person looking for him can teleport everywhere and see souls and cursed energy through walls for distances that are incomprehensible even to skilled sorcerers, Kenjaku knows they can’t go anywhere near any city, because there’s no way he isn’t periodically warping over cities looking for them.

When he considers only his locations that are sufficiently distant from points of interest and cities, and ones that have not potentially been exposed already, he realizes that he doesn’t have another safehouse to flee to if this one is compromised.

This little house outside of a country village that has all but died is the last refuge he has, and Kenjaku will decide his fate here.

Kenjaku remains at the table with his notebook and a laptop, watching Uraume trying in vain to calm Ryo Itadori in the living area, but he is screaming about wanting his brother again. Ingrid sits in the living room, looking at him like he’s a disgusting insect she wants to step on, but they can’t let her be alone in her room without tying her up, and if they do that, then they’ll have two screaming hostages.

What should he do now?

In chess, ‘check’ occurred when the game was in peril, but the player could still recover and win if they made strategic moves to remedy the situation.

‘Checkmate’ was a condition where action to end the game had not yet taken place, but the result had been decided and the imperiled player, even if they could move this pawn here or there, could not escape from loss.

There is no longer any path to the Culling Game; every element needed to create it has been taken from him or compromised in some way.

Culling Game Players supplied by Kenjaku were supposed to consist of two groups:

The first group was people who could have been sorcerers, but their minds weren’t formed correctly to facilitate the flow of cursed energy. Since he does not have Mahito, these individuals are lost forever.

The second group are the hosts, all of which are comatose with a cursed object waiting inside of their body. He can’t wake them up en masse without Mahito, and most are known to the Jujutsu Society to be cursed. Since he had to go to Tsumiki Fushiguro’s bedside to collect Yorozu’s cursed artifact in order to duplicate the Prison Realm, they probably know that those cursed people are related to him and that he might come around them.

In other words, if he gets near any of them, he’ll probably get caught.

And what would the point even be? The strongest legacy player was Hajime Kashimo, who wouldn’t even be able to get past Yuji or Yuta.

Kenjaku lost all the cursed spirits he was going to use to flood Tokyo during the ryokan incident, where he was forced to expel them all in one place in hopes of saving Mahito, which failed. Hurling them out of Geto’s body in a compact space out in the middle of nowhere in front of Okkotsu and Gojo was like throwing them in the garbage.

And finally, there was Tengen.

Without her, he couldn’t put up the barriers necessary to enforce the rules or initiate the merger.

Even if he just really wanted to fuck everyone over and make the monster Tengen spoke of, he just literally does not have the means to do that. The host group of the Culling Game is the only thing he has left, and he can’t get near them.

If he woke up all the hosts, with no actual Culling Game, the absolute best case scenario is that some of them might fight the Jujutsu Society, but Gojo faction at full power would flatten all the remaining potential players, no question. They could clear the field without Gojo himself needing to fight.

There simply isn’t anything that Kenjaku can do.

The Culling Game is dead.

Of course, there’s a path forward if he can figure out how time travel happened in the first place; even if he couldn’t go back very far, even turning the clock back to June would save him. Preventing Yuji from becoming a part of the Jujutsu Society is really the only thing that needs to happen. If he did that, if he didn’t show up at the ryokan, if he held onto Mahito and Geto’s body, everything would have gone according to plan.

Kenjaku had desperately hoped that Ryokun was the Forgotten Monster and that by restoring him, the monster would tell him how to travel through time and assist him with dealing with his more difficult enemies, but since he now knows that Ryokun is just an irritating child, that didn’t happen.

What was it like, to have a thousand-year dream destroyed by unenlightened minds?

Kenjaku was beyond devastated, because what had he been alive all these years for? What had he planned for, sacrificed for? All to have the rug pulled out from under him in the eleventh fucking hour? It was like everything had gone according to plan, and then suddenly, all of creation lurched against his will.

Kenjaku’s problems don’t end with the Culling Game.

An email comes through at 10:30 am to a BCC’ed email list that even reaches Kenjaku.

Hello friends and enemies and everyone else:

The Japanese Jujutsu Society is currently searching for a curse user named Kenjaku, who possesses the ability to change bodies. He is currently residing inside the body of Northern European sorcerer Tore Reksten (see attached pictures).

He may soon change bodies in order to avoid detection, likely to the body of a curse user. If you have a technique that is reasonably valuable and encounter him, there is a high chance he will kill you and steal your body.

While possessing the body of another person, distinct stitch lines are visible across the forehead.

Anyone providing information leading to his capture will receive the following rewards:

-Gold bars currently worth the equivalent of $50,000,000 American dollars
-Special grade weapon Inverted Spear of Heaven
-Special grade object Prison Realm

No questions asked, I don’t care who you are.  

Text a GPS location to me and I will come.

Anyone caught working with or assisting this curse user in any way, including helping him hide will be considered an accomplice and killed on sight, and my sight is very good.

Satoru Gojo

Kenjaku crinkles is nose a bit, because the clearly photoshopped images of Tore Reksten with the scars across his forehead are very accurate. There are generated images just of the scars as well, and his name has been broadcast to the world with the only clear way of identifying him.

His name is out, and probably, the email went to all the sorcery organizations, open markets, black market contacts, clans…everyone who is anyone probably knows his name, his technique, and how the forehead stitch will be visible in whatever body he is in.

Gojo’s move accomplishes several important goals:

It destroys Kenjaku’s anonymity forever. There’s no putting that genie back into the bottle, and even if he lives another five hundred years, the existence of a Japanese curse user who can be identified by a forehead stitch will still be publicly known by sorcerers everywhere.

The probability that he could steal the body of another prominent sorcerer or someone in a factional alliance and get away with it is slim. No one ever fully covers up their forehead, and doing so during a manhunt for a man with distinct forehead scarring is suspicious as hell.

Gojo also exposed Tore Reksten, so everyone will be looking for him. Maybe the intent was to force Kenjaku to abandon this particular body, because it’s more dangerous than any other on earth that Kenjaku is aware of. Capturing this body is one of the most fortuitous things that has ever happened to him, so feeling pressured to leave it behind because his identity has been thoroughly burned is upsetting.

And finally, offering even the worst curse users an incomprehensible amount of untraceable wealth and two of the most powerful cursed objects ever created ensures that Kenjaku won’t be able to hire curse users off the black market to bolster his team, which has been reduced only to himself and Uraume.

If he even tries, they’ll go straight to Gojo and get that bag.

Yes, the walls are closing in.

The safest thing would be to switch to a different body, but giving up this particular body is such a huge concession. Kenjaku isn’t sure if he is willing to make that sacrifice just because Satoru Gojo is a kind of a dick, and his son Yuji Itadori doesn’t respect his mother.

On the other hand, Kenjaku doesn’t believe there is a constellation of powers that would allow him to overpower all the opponents he would need to eliminate in order to resolve his current problems.

If he stays in this body, he will have to fight, and he will probably lose. Staying in this body with Temporal Distortion preserves the possibility of time travel. If he gives up that position, there will be no erasing the failures that have taken place, but betting the future on being able to do something only one person has probably ever done in the history of humanity isn’t necessarily a wise move.

If he leaves the body, there’s no reason to kill either of the hostages. Maybe spite, but spite wasn’t ultimately a strategic move. His enemies were tenacious, mean, and violent. If he lets the hostages live, when tomorrow’s crisis comes, they’ll pay attention to that instead. If he kills them to make a point, they will never look away from him until either he has died or they have.

Kenjaku ponders his next move.

While he considers it all, he notes Uraume is in a strange mood and becomes suspicious that she might plan on escaping with the kid and returning him to Yuji. Even if he’s not her master, she does have some loyalty to him, and Kenjaku knows she’ll use her life to protect him.

Maybe he’s just becoming paranoid, but he’s sure she’s decided it’s time for them to part ways, and so after Ryo Itadori falls asleep in the afternoon, when she goes outside for some fresh air, he kills her rather abruptly, by simply walking up behind her and crushing her head with Gravity Manipulation.

Uraume wasn’t expecting it, didn’t defend against it, and didn’t have time to register any sort of response to it.

When he goes back inside, Ryokun is still napping on the sofa, but Ingrid is no longer with him.

Kenjaku heads back to the bedroom, where he finds her, once again, hanging from the ceiling beam with sheets wrapped around her neck and chair kicked out from under her.

Ingrid isn’t purple yet, and he can tell she’s still alive, and there’s a puddle of liquid on the floor directly under her.

When he brings her down this time, as she catches her breath and hisses curses at him, she doubles over in pain.

Kenjaku looks down at her and asks, “Your labor started? How annoying.”

Back to his theory that there is a small chance that Gojo will be able to find them much more easily as soon as that baby comes out, Kenjaku realizes that he will have to make a decision immediately about what it is that he wants to do.

Retreat from all of this including this wonderful body and lay low until he finds some other dream to work toward?

OR

Dig in and power up as much as he can and bet everything on time travel in hopes that he can still complete his original goal?

Kenjaku is fairly confident that if he just walked out the door right now, Ingrid would just hang herself and he had no idea what would happen to the toddler. He might eventually escape outside and walk toward town, or he might die in the house. He refused to eat hot dogs that weren’t cut up like octopuses, but he also almost called Yuji on the phone because they didn’t realize that he’d be able to do that?

What to do, what to do?

That woman was already in labor, and that wasn’t a process that could really be stopped. Maybe it would be one hour, maybe it would be seventy, but that baby was coming.

Kenjaku doesn’t want Ingrid to make the decision for him, so he ties her to the bed using zip ties, and then returns to the living room to think about things for a bit.

Bet everything on violence and time travel and swipe the techniques from the hostages?

OR

Switch bodies and disappear, let everyone move on, and lay low until he’s no longer the monster of the month?

As much as Kenjaku adores the idea of some dazzling risk-it-all strategy, that’s just not how he works.

Even though he has suffered a brutal and humiliating defeat, and he didn’t get to do what he wanted, he did learn many things. His horizons have broadened and there are still things he wants to know and do.

In the end, he will always be a snake who slithers into the shadows when things don’t go his way.

The current Jujutsu Society might seem like an insurmountable obstacle, but it’s not necessary for him to kill an opponent who is not immortal. Eventually, time will do it for him.

Besides, he can probably make himself a new Tore Reksten. He had corrupted this body, but he did have another source of genetic material from this same family. It wouldn’t even be the first time he made a lady get pregnant a bunch of times in order to see if she’d make any interesting offspring.

Kenjaku places a listing on a black market site for a fake assassin job, posts a high price, with high difficulty, to ensure no worthless waste-of-space answered.

A curse user named Bayer answers, and Kenjaku remembers him, because he involved himself in all that mess with Riko Amanai, which he had controlled from the shadows.

He’s not anything special, but he’ll do, and if he takes over Bayer, if he can keep his forehead stitches hidden successfully, he might even be able to control that stupid little group he has.

The screaming in the back room gets on his nerves, and he goes to the door and says, “Stop being so dramatic.”

“You don’t know how much it hurts!” she rasps.

Kenjaku mockingly answers, “I gave birth without screaming even once. My husband was so proud of me. I kind of miss that guy. I was in labor for forty hours, pushing for four, and for what? I ripped my coochie and butthole into one unified opening for Yuji Itadori, and what thanks did I get? My dumb kid joined my enemies, ruined my life, and destroyed my dreams. All of my children are ungrateful to me for everything that I have done for them.”

Kenjaku can tell Ingrid’s labor is progressing quickly and mostly without complication despite her repeated suicide attempts this past week. There is a strange dissonance between how her body nourishes, protects, and nurtures her baby and how uninterested in its life she actually is.

Ingrid would rather kill the girl than let anyone else have her, regardless of their intentions, and that includes her preferring to kill the baby than let her father raise her in a loving environment. Kenjaku admires her ability to ignore all of her biological instincts in favor of malice.

Yes, he feels much better, because he accepted a loss in the battle, but will retreat so he can continue his war from the shadows. He will make his little offerings to make Six Eyes look away from him, he will surrender the required concessions because losing battles is pain always painful and expensive.

It’s not checkmate until he dies, and his enemies will not achieve that objective.

He will disappear, and when he returns, next time, he will win.

Overhead, Yuji and Nanami are on a commuter plane to the next location on their fruitless search when he suddenly jerks to attention.

“Stop!” he exclaims.

Nanami says, “What do you mean, ‘stop?!’ We’re on an airplane, Itadori!”

“He’s close! I see the shape of his soul!”

There are civilians on this flight, which is luckily beginning descent to land, which means they’re all buckled in when Yuji Itadori forces the door and jumps, no parachute, no second thought, no consideration at all for anything that is happening around him.

It is only as Yuji plummets toward icy trees below that he remembers that he cannot fly and attempts to transfigure himself into something with wings.

This is wholly unsuccessful, and his giant flappy arms do little more than give the branches more surface area to rip apart as they slow his bloody descent, but his legs still crack on impact and he rolls through the snowy woods, further injuring himself.

Yuji hisses in pain as he uses a combination of transfiguration and reverse curse technique to heal his shattered legs and cut up body and return it to the state it was in when he jumped. When he reaches for his phone, it’s completely busted.

So he gets up, and he starts running, relying on his incredibly athleticism and maybe a little transfiguring of his leg muscles to make them a little stronger as he sprints toward the direction where he sensed the shape of Ryokun’s soul, even if it was just for a second.

It is a long run through deep frozen dormant fields, patches of forest, and a few sharp descents, until Yuji is forced to stop to catch his breath.

While he leans on a tree, his vision is suddenly eclipsed by someone else crashing through the trees toward him.

It’s the pig-tailed sorcerer from his visions of the future, one of the more mysterious figures. In one vision, presumably the earliest, maybe the pig-tailed sorcerer almost beat him to death in a toilet, but every time after that, they were best friends up to his last vision, when the pig-tailed sorcerer sacrifices himself to save Yuji.

Choso says, “You fiend! Are you an associate of that monster? The one monster who wears many faces?”

Realizing right away this really can’t refer to anyone but Kenjaku, he answers, “No, I’m looking for him because he took my little brother.”

Choso puts his hand on the tree and despondently says, “He took my brothers from me as well.” Then, he looks over Yuji, realizes there is something familiar about him, and asks, “Is your little brother the small demon with pink hair?”

“Yes! Small pink demon. That is him!”

“I saw him. My bastard father is holding him hostage.”

Yuji says, “It’s a really long story, but I’m Yuji, and I think you and me are supposed to be good friends.”

“I am Choso, and I have no desire for friends. I only wish to kill my father, for his sins against my younger brothers.”

“As long as you don’t put my little brother in danger, it’s fine.”

“Do not insult my honor as an older brother, or I will nourish the earth with your blood.”

All the months leading up to this, when Ryokun was asked if he remembered Choso’s name, he insisted on multiple occasions that Choso is ‘trash,’ and once used the phrase ‘riff-raff,’ an incredibly funny and bizarre thing to hear a small child utter.

Choso’s soul and body didn’t match, which was very odd, but Yuji isn’t in a situation where he was going to ask questions. All of his fragmented memories tell him that Choso is good to have in a battle, and that despite what he says, he’s destined to be a friend.

“I don’t know for sure that your guy is there, but I know my brother is this way,” Yuji says, pointing.

They run the rest of the way together, and when the little isolated house comes into view, Yuji bursts through the door with Choso right beside him.

“Ryokun!” he shouts, without properly decelerating, crashing through the house.

The boy wakes up from his nap and goes directly from sleep to rocket, leaping over the back of the sofa just in time for Yuji to catch him.

Kenjaku is sitting beside Ingrid’s bedside, monitoring her progress when he hears the commotion.

When he leaves the room, he finds that somehow Yuji and Choso have indeed both found each other as well as him.

“Oh look, the ungrateful Fail Sons have come to visit me.”

Yuji isn’t sure how to keep Ryokun safe while they fight, but suddenly, one of Fushiguro’s demon dogs runs up behind them, and Yuji realizes that somehow or another, other people have found this place.

The white demon dog nuzzles against Ryokun’s foot, and Yuji understands.

He puts Ryokun on the dog’s back, and Ryokun also seems to understand, because he holds on and rides the demon dog straight out the door.

In the bedroom, Ingrid hears a strange sound as the window explodes into powder and Satoru Gojo appears in the room, having received a text from Nanami with the GPS coordinates where Yuji jumped. With Six Eyes, it was a little easier for him to find the area, and he had brought Yuta and Megumi since they were already with him when he received it.

And suddenly, she is outside, surprisingly far from the house, behind a rocky embankment on the tall side of a frozen pond. It’s starting to snow and visibility in the area is getting worse.

Gojo asks, “Hey Ingrid, how’s all the evildoing working out for you? Looks like it’s not going great, actually,” he says.

She huffs, “Fuck you, I’m in labor.”

“Sorry for bringing you all the way over here then. It’s just that some of my students are here, and I don’t want them to see what I’m about to do. They wouldn’t look up to me anymore.”

She crawls backward. “What are you going to do?”

“Shhhh.”

One minute later, while Kenjaku runs his mouth at his sons in the house, a slippery, wet newborn rests in Gojo’s hands.

She’s the most perfect thing, but he can’t bask in the moment right now. It’s freezing cold, and he has something he has to do to make sure that this sweet girl can live in a slightly better world.

He zips the baby up in his jacket and waits for the white demon dog to speed through the snow and bring him one cold but relieved Ryokun.

“Mr. Gojo!”

“Hey, little man! Glad to see you’re okay. We’re going to do a little magic trick, okay? You might feel a little icky after, but it’ll only last for a few seconds.”

Gojo, supporting the lump under his jacket with one hand, lifts Ryokun with one arm to his side, and in an instant, warps to the garden in front of his home. Once he safely delivers the hostages, he warps right back to the battlefield.

When Kenjaku saw the demon dog, he craned his head and rushed back to the bedroom, but Ingrid was already gone, and the demon dog was speeding through the snow with the other hostage.

If he chased, it would be bad for him. He’d already made the mistake of letting Choso and Yuji get between him and Ryokun and he’d lost the other hostage, which meant Gojo was probably somewhere around too.

The back door slides open, and Yuta enters. “Am I late?”

Yuji asks, “How did you find this place?”

“Nanami sent a text to Gojo. Gojo and Fushiguro are outside.”

This was a fib, because Gojo had seemingly disappeared, but the important thing was that Kenjaku believes Gojo was outside because Gojo was likely the only one that could catch Kenjaku if he tries to escape with Gravity Manipulation.

Kenjaku considers his situation.

He is out in the middle of nowhere, which was good for hiding, but there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to hold anything back. There is nothing that is off limits to the sorcerers because there are no innocents at risk.

The curse user Bayer is supposed to essentially be his escape pod, but even if he arrived right at that moment, the sorcerers would just beat him up. He didn’t think Gojo was kidding about killing anyone who associated with him at all. For some reason it seemed like he was really pissed off.

So in other words, in order for him to continue living beyond this confrontation, he would either have to defeat or escape from Choso, Satoru Gojo, Yuji Itadori, Megumi Fushiguro and all his shikigami, and Yuta Okkotsu with Rika.

There are at least three domain expansions, at least two of which are known to be absolutely catastrophic.

This isn’t a strike force of sorcerers.

It’s an execution squad.

Kenjaku doesn’t have any more emergency escapes, tricks, plots, or ploys to play. The hostages are gone, he can’t run, he doesn’t have another body to jump to, and until this is over, there’s not going to be a moment when the eyes of his enemies are not on him.

It really isn’t fair, because Kenjaku had resolved to let the hostages live in order to ensure his own survival. It was reasonable; they live, he lives.

For him to lose the hostages, gain nothing, and still die at the end was just ridiculous.

It’s his way, to stir up trouble and slink into the darkness to continue his work.

Kenjaku considers what he can do, and thinks about spoiling Satoru Gojo’s secret, but what would be the point? These are his most loyal soldiers; it wouldn’t matter if they knew. They’d never question him, and they’d guard his secret with their lives. Most of them would probably not even be surprised to find out their teacher had some embarrassing sex scandal he was trying to hide.

Maybe he could taunt Yuji and Choso? It was maybe more humiliating to be the parent about to be slain by the monster children than to be the monster child? If a swordsmith was stabbed to death with a weapon that he painstakingly forged, that would be kind of embarrassing, wouldn’t it?

Is this really how it’s going to end?

A thousand years, a million dreams, countless knowledge, experiments, a journey that had gone on for so long and was yet unfinished as far as Kenjaku was concerned?

Really, it was all Yuji’s fault.

If Ryokun wasn’t the time traveler, it had to be him. Everything that had gone wrong was Yuji’s fault, including whatever the hell is happening now. It should not have been possible for the Jujutsu Society to find him in this remote spot.

Choso meanwhile does not know who any of these people are, but apparently everyone wants to murder his father, so he decides that’s all right. The fact he called him and Yuji his ‘fail sons’ gives him pause as he considers the meaning of these words.

The roof of the house is abruptly ripped off, and Gojo peers down into the house as he floats above.

Gojo announces, “Hostage has made it to home base. Oh?! It’s PIGTAILS!”

Choso doesn’t realize that Gojo is even talking to him and completely ignores this, but Yuji shouts, “His name is Choso.”

“Please be careful…I think that thing might not be human.”

Choso looks up and says, “I am here to spill the blood of my many-faced father!”

“Okay, buddy! Kind of intense, but I think we’re all here for the same thing. Let’s go, team!” Gojo gives a thumbs up.

Kenjaku finds the idea that his other fail son would be on the same side as Gojo in any matter to be wildly insulting, but the real question is what it is that he’s supposed to do?

Kenjaku wonders if all of these people are actually willing to kill.

Gojo murdered his own best friend in an alley, so he will absolutely kill him.

Choso is scarcely human and has no idea that killing people is kind of an inhuman thing to do, so no luck there.

Okkotsu would murder anyone that Gojo would, so that’s a dead end.

That really just leaves the youngest students, Megumi Fushiguro and Yuji Itadori.

Yuji doesn’t seem like a killer, but who knew what he’d do to the man who kidnapped his ‘brother?’

Kenjaku can’t do the math any way that leads to him making it out alive; still, he’s not just going to take it.

Maybe he’ll try, and hope someone makes a mistake.

“Don’t obliterate the body. We want Rika to have a nice, big meal,” Gojo instructs.

Kenjaku tries to use the snow to obscure their senses, tainting it with cursed energy sucking it up from everywhere and blasting it in the direction he expected to escape from.

Kenjaku dodges an attack from Yuji, and suddenly, the world was upside down?

When he moved to right himself, he couldn’t feel his arms or legs, and in his field of vision, he saw a headless body falling to the ground.

Oh.

That’s the issue—his head has become detached somehow or another, and that just seems very bad?

Yuta tips over the head so it is looking up, and before Kenjaku can utter a taunt, a curse, one last witty retort about all of it, Yuta plunges the cursed sword into his forehead and through his true body.

Kenjaku is still trying to figure out what he can do to remedy his situation when he suddenly finds himself in a dark room, with a giant eye looking down at him.

“Kenjaku Tanashiro.”

“Booooo!”

The Eye glances to the side, to find Sukuna sitting off to the side on the floor with his legs crossed, eating a snack.

With a tired sigh because not this one again, the god says, “Excuse me, what are you doing? This is a judgement. It is a sober occasion. How did you even know he was going to be here?”

Sukuna answers, “It was obvious. His last days, he was like a failed dictator with a bad mustache, sitting in a bunker and realizing the only way out of his troubles was with a little can-do attitude and a little lead. Hey…did you unmake that guy’s soul?”

“Of course we did. What kind of question is that?”

Kenjaku, now free from the ban on Sukuna knowledge from the world of the living, suddenly remembers everything and knows right away that the whole time travel fiasco was definitely this dumbass that came to his judgement to jeer at him.

Kenjaku is incensed by the implication that he’d been cooked the whole time and says, “I had a hundred moves.”

“You’re dead, dumbass. Who got you this time? I want it to be Yuji, but it’s more insulting if Okkotsu got you on the sneak again.”

When he saw the other former sorcerer’s face, he knew it was true and fell over onto his back so he could laugh.

The Eye actually finds showing up to someone’s judgements to yell and eat snacks to be a very Ryomen Sukuna thing to do, but he also knows that Kenjaku almost killed a certain someone that Sukuna already destroyed the world for once.

Sukuna’s hatred for Kenjaku is based entirely in the fact that Sayuri Gojo died because of Kenjaku’s monster. It is his fault that she left that world, which he would have lived in without complaint if she had survived. The fact that he targeted Sayuri before she was even born in the new timeline was fuel on a very hot fire.

As for Kenjaku, that’s not anything to debate. He had more than enough negative karma to ensure the ultimate punishment: destruction of the soul. Letting him reincarnate into the world of the living would have been an obvious mistake.

He was a different sort of monster than Sukuna, after all.

Sukuna experienced famine before he was even born, and faced virtually every variant of human cruelty regularly as a child, emerging as someone who did not seem human because he had been denied humanity as he grew up. He cursed because he had been cursed, and that was simply how his sense of self evolved. But, in the end, he died with a human heart.

Kenjaku was born into privilege and never suffered any hardship in his very long life that he didn’t directly bring upon himself. He chose to become a monster, and he died a monster. The only thing that stopped him from almost eradicating humanity out of his incredible disregard for life was Sukuna.

The former sorcerer predictably tries to wiggle out of his judgement with arguments, but there’s no explaining away most of what has happened, and in the end, the floor opened up and he fell into a fiery pit before it closed again.

Sukuna finds this lackluster. “That’s the hellfire that melts souls? I expected something more dramatic?”

The Eye says, “Having to destroy a person forever is a solemn occasion.”

“I’m just saying, you could do a whole ceremony, maybe make the condemned fight each other for a second chance.”

“So you think that failed dictator from the bunker and Kenjaku should have fought each other, and whoever won, got to return to the world of the living?”

Sukuna says, “Excuse me for trying to have some fun.”

“Please go back to whatever you were doing before you decided to come here again. Your friend was judged earlier and sent to her tomb, weren’t you waiting?”

“Uraume?! Why didn’t you say so?”

The Eye asks, “And why are you traveling with a Star Plasma Vessel?”

“With a what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever you are planning, please don’t.”

Sukuna shrugs. “You are always suspicious of me.”

When he leaves and goes back into the city, he meets up with Riko Amanai and says, “Are you ready?”

“I was already ready. You’re the one that wanted to show up to a funeral and boo.”

“We’re going back to my island for a bit. We have to meet up with our third.”

Once they make it to the docks and get on the boat, Riko sits on the edge and dangles her feet off, kicking her feet in the water.

Riko says, “Suguru can’t leave his island for seven more years. Apparently, something about he didn’t like monkeys? They punish you for that here?”

Sukuna answers, “I think it all depends on what you think of as a monkey, and how much you don’t like them?”

“Lame!”

There’s something comfy about having an obnoxious young girl with him; Riko is not her, but it’s fine. Riko has been in the spirit world for a long time and hasn’t been able to find anyone she knows except Geto.

Geto isn’t able to leave his tomb for a while because of that little genocide thing he very evidently did not tell her about, so she asked if she could go with him to look for Misato Kuroi.

The Eye seems to think there is some sort of deliberate trouble he could cause with a star plasma vessel, and now he’s just curious about what that trouble is, and whether he should do it.

Sukuna thinks he could talk Riko into doing mischief, but for now, he decides to check in on his reincarnation because while Ryokun didn’t notice the suspicious lump under Satoru Gojo’s jacket when he was being rescued, Sukuna was watching, and he certainly did.

Meanwhile, by the time Yuji made it home that night, Ryokun had already had hotpot and passed out from exhaustion with his cat, Mikan, in Yuji’s bed. One of the attendants in the Gojo clan had taken care of him after a doctor gave him a checkup, and he was bathed and fed. There’s a bath already drawn, the heat is on, and dinner is on the stove, so when he and Choso enter, it’s to shake off snow at the door and unwind.

It was bitterly cold and windy out, and the attendant checks to see if they need anything else.

Yuji feels a bit embarrassed that a servant has been looking after Ryokun. “Sorry, I kind of assumed he was with the lady of the clan.”

“Lady Chiyo is having her baby, so we brought him here.”

“Really?! The baby is being born?”

“Indeed. With any luck, the baby will come tonight,” she says as she bundles up and heads out to make her way to the other side of the estate where the attendants stay.

Once the door closes, Choso asks, “Is it really okay for me to intrude on your home?”

“It’s fine. I invited you. It’s freezing out. Not a place for somebody who doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

Choso walks over to the fireplace and holds his hands out; the floors in the apartment are heated so it’s cozy, but it’s extra, extra cozy in front of the fireplace. “The cold seems cruel.”

“You weren’t bundled up enough for it. You’re a little bigger than I am, but we’ll get you some winter clothes tomorrow.”

Yuji checks in and finds that Ryokun is indeed asleep, and then returns to Choso to serve him a big bowl of beef hotpot.

“After dinner, you can take the first bath, and I’ll put out a futon in the living room. We have two bedrooms, but Ryokun would be mad if you slept in his room because it’s his area, and also mad if you slept in my room, because that’s where he actually sleeps. He’s sort of at an age where he’s difficult sometimes and he’s been through a lot, so I try not to be hard on him.”

Choso says, “You’re such a good older brother.”

Choso hadn’t eaten since he separated from Kenjaku several days before, and had been running around in the cold trying to find him so he could get vengeance, so to suddenly be warm and full was so comforting although he struggled to understand why Yuji would extend this warmth to him.

His stupid father called them both his sons, and he wanted to ask, but it’s clear that Yuji hasn’t slept well in a long time and that he’s just grateful that his little brother is home. As a big brother, he decides whatever his concern is, it can wait until tomorrow. His potential little brother needs rest.

After setting out a futon in the living room by the fire, Yuji has a bath after Choso and finally makes it to bed, trying his best not to awaken Ryokun.

He wakes up anyway, immediately attaches himself to Yuji like an octopus, and starts crying.

He doesn’t say anything, he just cries, not his little defiant angry bad temper cry, but more like the way a little baby cries.

It makes Yuji feel like such a failure, because he’s been through so much in so little time. An attempted kidnapping, then a successful one, and then it took eight days to find him. He’s so, so, so tiny to be without people who care about him for that long and he knows it must have been so scary and so difficult for him.

“I’m so sorry. I know I said it before, but I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again. I promise. Please keep believing in me.”

At the Gojo house, Satoru is watching his daughter eat.

Gojo had never heard of induced lactation before any of this happened, but his wife had gone through it with hormone therapy and breast pumping and teas. She is currently breastfeeding the baby like she really did carry her.

Over the months leading up to this, there were a lot of quiet apprehensions about what it would be like when the baby arrived. Gojo wondered if he would still feel such emotional hesitancy, and Chiyo wondered if she would miss out on whatever biological bond should have existed.

Months had been spent dwelling on these worries, on the idea that the baby would arrive, and she wouldn’t be loved the way she deserved to be, because of the situation.

They haven’t had time to revisit those fears, because THEY HAD A BABY!!!

While it took years for Sukuna to love the baby in question enough that he was willing to destroy the world for her, Satoru was ready to do it right at that moment, no questions asked.

Maybe animals loved purely out of instinct, but humans were far more complicated. The love a person felt out of instinct or hormones was different than the love they chose to give out of the abundance of their heart.

Satoru says, “Look at her, pretending I’m not here. It took her one hour of life to pick a favorite.”

“I think it’s just because I’m feeding her?”

“I underestimated my enemy. Perhaps I should have spent these last months developing boobies for this occasion.”

“I think men can do it, actually?”

Satoru, laying shirtless on his side with his head propped up on his hand, says, “It would be funny as hell if I just started growing breasts and didn’t tell anyone. Change nothing else, just exactly me, but growing titties with no explanation or acknowledgement. See who finally asks and how long it takes them.”

She laughs. “You’re the worst.”

“Nothing would be funnier than if it would be Nanami. This is an unexpected sentence, but I would love to make Kento ask about my titties. He would resist asking the longest. What would be even funnier is if I hid if from everyone except Nanami.”

“I hope that poor man has a very nice vacation from you. I’m a good wife, so I fully support you if you want to have breasts as long as they’re not bigger than mine. You’d probably feel a certain kind of way if I went out and got a ding-a-ling and it was bigger than yours.”

Gojo pouts, “I hate being underestimated.”

“Boy, shut up.”

It’s blissful being a ridiculous person married to another ridiculous person.

Satoru leans down to kiss a very tiny little chubby foot. “I can’t get over her feet.”

The baby strongly favors her father, with a surprising amount of slightly opalescent white hair, distinctly Gojo features, and eyes that were dark and something between violet and blue. Since newborn eye color could change, it was hard to tell if they would stay that way, but at the current moment, they looked just like little blueberries.

A mystery, since in the other timeline, she was supposed to have Six Eyes, and yet Ryokun had spoken often about his desire to find Blueberry.

After the baby finished eating, Chiyo gently handed her over so she could rest skin-on-skin against her father’s chest.

She got up from the bed briefly and returned to the bed with a ukelele. Pausing briefly, she wrote on a journal in her nightstand and turned the notebook around.

The kanji for blossom, elegant, and gemstone were written on the page.

“Sayuri? I love that, actually. Sayuri Gojo sounds perfect,” he says.

“Me too.”

She snuggles in, resting her head on his shoulder and plays a lullaby oh-so-gently while still topless, singing softly for the baby.

Satoru finds this moment obscenely perfect, almost like it’s a sin or that he’s not entitled to feel as happy as he does. There is a parallel world, maybe many, in fact, where he and Sayuri never even get to meet, much less have this absolutely great moment.

They have a surprisingly restful night, with the baby sleeping between them. Sayuri fusses a little here and there, but she also rests better than one might usually expect from a newborn.

When morning comes, Chiyo wants to see Ryokun so she can talk to him and apologize for not helping him when he was kidnapped, and Gojo is absolutely sure that Ryokun is dying to see her since she remains his favorite person next to Yuji.

Gojo also wants to see if Ryokun will positively identify Sayuri as the mysterious, legendary Blueberry.

When he makes it to the apartment, he finds Yuji feeding his strays, the little rescue he found in June and the big feral one he only found the afternoon before.

Satoru has determined that Choso is definitely a Death Painting, but it’s not like he incarnated himself, or that anything would be gained by terminating his incarnated form. Since he definitely died a good guy in the other timeline, Gojo agreed to let Yuji bring him home.

Yuji looks up. “Baby?”

“Baby!” Satoru exclaims, cheesing ear-to-ear.

“Seriously?!”

He whips out his phone and shows him his new wallpaper, a squishy little white-haired baby sleeping peacefully. “Sayuri Gojo, the most perfect being ever to exist in this world or any other.”

Ryokun exclaims, “The baby came out?!”

Satoru says, “After little man finishes his breakfast, would you mind if I borrowed him for a bit? I’ll have the rest of you over later to meet the baby, but Chiyo wants to see him.”

Ryokun starts eating as fast as he can and then jumps off his chair and runs to the door.

Yuji bundles him up, and he leaves, holding onto Gojo’s hand.

“Did you miss me?”

“Of course.”

“I missed you too.”

It was a cute little moment, and then Ryokun pivoted fully.

His resilience really couldn’t be understated, as he just got back less than twenty-four hours ago and he’s already in a somewhat normal mood.

Ryokun asks, “The baby was inside. Now it’s outside.”

“That’s right.”

“How did it come out?”

Gojo reaches into his pocket and gives him several pieces of candy. “Never ask me that question. Good deal?”

“Okay! Good deal!”

They take a detour at the Gojo residence so they can wash their hands again, before heading up to the bedroom, where Chiyo was holding Sayuri on the bed.

“Easy, don’t be rough. Gentle, gentle,” Gojo says as Ryokun climbs up.

Ryokun was surprisingly careful as he nestled in next to Chiyo.

“It’s a baby!” he loudly whispers, and then a gasp as his expression brightens, “Blueberry!”

Chapter Text

Satoru moves from place to place, following a map.

While trying to cover up his own problem, Gojo discovered information about the Culling Game in Kenjaku’s last hideout.

Now and then, he pulls a cursed spike out of the ground that has sealing paper wrapped tightly around it. These were the markers that were supposed to make up the territories. There’s so much cursed energy in each one that even though Kenjaku isn’t here to activate them, if a smaller curse ate one, or a person without cursed energy picked one up, it would be a problem.

The monster’s existence makes a lot more sense; it seems fairly elementary that concentrating enough cursed energy in one place will result in a cursed spirit forming. Maybe there were some safeguards intended to prevent that from happening, or maybe there weren’t, but in the end, there were limits to how powerful a curse could be, and this idiotic plan would have allowed those limits to be exceeded.

But that monster will never exist, because they managed to write her out of the story one step at a time.

Satoru sent Megumi and Yuji on a quest a couple of days prior to investigate the ‘host group’ and see if Yuji can fix whatever Kenjaku did to them, and he was absolutely able to wake them up. Some of them had cursed objects in their bodies, and he was able to remove them and transfigure them back into their normal form.

That list includes Tsumiki Fushiguro, which is both surprising, and also a reminder that their former enemy was one of the most fucked people to ever walk the earth. Megumi and his sister weren’t even related, and she had no connection to the world of sorcery. The only reason to hurt her would be to hurt Megumi.

Honestly, what a piece of shit. Good riddance.

Gojo decided to clean up what was left of the Culling Game on his own and destroy all the evidence about it. It would have been a mistake to let the Jujutsu Society gain the knowledge, because it is the part of Kenjaku that could still live on. Satoru isn’t going to curse the future world with that knowledge; he will take it to the grave and seal it away for the rest of eternity.

He's in Tokyo currently, and even though it’s Christmas Eve, he has a little errand to run. He called ahead and was surprised to find that the person he wanted to talk to was still working even on this day.

It looks like it’s going to snow again.

This winter has been unusually terrible for some reason, but as he takes the elevator up a high-rise, he’s just grateful that it’ll hopefully be a peaceful winter.

His phone vibrates; his wife has sent him a picture of Sayuri, Ryokun, and Mikan the cat all taking an afternoon nap together.

Ryokun is usually sort of like a pinball, surprisingly rough for his age, but he is so, so delicate with the baby. He’ll lay down and hold one of her little hands and talk to her about everything that he has learned about everything so far.

Sayuri seems to enjoy his company. She likes attention, and he’ll certainly give her all of his.

It’s going to be interesting when they’re old enough to talk to each other.

Hiromu Higuruma’s office is piled high with papers, and he has a perpetually stressed out look chiseled onto his face as he greets Gojo.

There is a piece of paper with names in his pocket of people that Kenjaku marked as potential sorcerers. Since Yuji is able to use Idle Transfiguration, it seems like he might be able to turn these people into sorcerers.

Gojo wonders if that’s a moral thing to do?

More sorcerers who help people would be net positive for society, but probably net negative for the potential sorcerers themselves? It’s not an easy lifestyle, but then again, if Satoru was given the choice to be normal, he doesn’t think he’d take it.

Gojo decided he’d meet with them and see if meeting them would give him a better feeling about what to do.

Also, he needed to hire an attorney.

“What’s the situation?”

Gojo sits in the attorney’s office and explains that he works at a small religious school, and that a few days prior, one of the employees was travelling with a student on a commuter flight when the student had a religious epiphany, ran past the flight staff, forced the door open, and jumped out of the plane.

Higuruma says, “I saw that story on the news. Something about a kid yelling that he saw a soul and then committing suicide by jumping from the plane.”

“Oh, he’s fine. He’s very durable. From praying. He prays a lot. Anyway, both the student and the employee have been placed on a certain government list made up of people who should not be allowed on airplanes. The staffer was scheduled to go on vacation to Malaysia and he is mad as fuck that he is on a no-fly list. He punched me in my tummy.”

Higuruma scribbles in his notebook. “The kid was having a mental health crisis. A minor?”

“Yes, only fifteen. He’s been through a lot this year.”

“Did the employee know the student was in crisis?”

“Let’s say ‘no,’ but yes. Absolutely he did.”

Gojo could use the political machine of the Jujutsu Society to fix the issue, but he wants to see if this man will ask questions, express opinions, show his true colors. Someone who works hard to defend the innocent seems like someone who might have a lot to offer the Jujutsu Society.

Nanami’s fate either being death or no-fly list is hilarious to Gojo, although not to Nanami, who evidently can’t travel by boat because he gets seasick, which only makes it funnier.

While Gojo works, Ryokun is at his home, basking in the afterglow of a nice afternoon nap with Blueberry.

Sukuna can only observe her this way through Ryokun’s senses, and what he can see is that Sayuri is wonderfully alive. In the other future, after he met Yuji’s baby girl, he wondered what Sayuri was like at this life stage.

Sayuri is a perfect little Blueberry Marshmallow. Chubby and soft, soft body, soft skin, soft hair. Teeniest little hands and feet ever. Pretty little gemstone eyes that peer at Ryokun curiosity.

Ryokun is unspeakably cute with her; he holds her little hand and loves to lay down and talk softly to her about everything. He sings little songs for her, and this afternoon, talks to her about his favorite colors and why they are his favorite colors, and what colors he thinks Sayuri will like.

Sukuna can hardly bear how ridiculously adorable he is in his next life, but in his former life, he spent most of his childhood being beaten by the locals who thought he was an unclean spirit and spent his early years trying not to starve.

It’s a little annoying, but he’s glad Ryokun is happy. There’s something cathartic about watching him be a cheerful little guy.

Sometimes he thinks about how despite all his accomplishments, it seems like the only motivation that caried over into his next life was a desire to be with Sayuri again.

There were times earlier when he first arrived in the spirit world that Sukuna contemplated whether he did the right thing. If he’d just died in the future after she did, they would have been together in the spirit world there. Yet after traveling with Riko for a few days, he realizes that the spirit world is an okay place to be if one is satisfied with their life, but it is a curse for someone who has to come here when they are young.

Riko died at an age where her mind was filled with possibility, yet she didn’t really get to live very much.

Sayuri’s life in the other timeline was not great. She was born into a world that was literally falling apart to a mother whose sole reason for keeping her alive was to kill her. She had her eyes sewn shut at birth, ended up being expelled and forced to wander around outside in the curse-infested wilderness until she almost died from starvation, was taken in by her father’s killer who also did not care about her for a long time, and the story goes on and on, one horror after another sprinkled in with some moments where they managed to have a little normalcy. Maybe they laughed here and there, but things were never great in the world that she lived in, and then a monster tore her head off.

She would not have been able to say, ‘I lived a good life.’

Sayuri wanted to live and do normal things. Travel, see the places overseas that she saw pictures of in books, learn more science, become a mother someday…she had real dreams that died with her.

In the current timeline, her life so far is already so much different.

She has two parents who love her more than anything, gets as much attention as she can stand, and has spent her days since birth snuggling, eating, sleeping, hearing her parents tell her how precious she is, and being serenaded.

Sayuri will grow up in a better world, without the burden of having to save it, and she will always be surrounded by people who care about her.

However:

Even when she gets old and dies, and comes to this place, she will not remember anything about him. Everyone else like Yuji will get a second chance to build those relationships and have those people in his life again, but Sukuna will not. Nothing that ever happened between him and Sayuri will ever be real to anyone but him.

All of that is lost forever.

Sukuna doesn’t regret anything, and he would do it all over again, if he had the same decision to make.

Because in the end, he doesn’t need Sayuri to remember; he just needs her to have a good life this time. That’s enough.

When he is feeling peaceful about her situation makes room in his mind for other things, he thinks a lot about maybe killing and eating one of the gods that rule over this world.

Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.

For now, he’s been reunited with his favorite traveling companion, and they are exploring this strange new world together, with obnoxious brat Riko Amanai who will absolutely fall asleep when she’s supposed to be navigating the boat.

Being with Uraume and going to new places just to see what’s there reminds him of when he was young, and they were living in their own time, back before they took Kenjaku’s poison and cursed themselves.

Uraume laughs at his crazy stories of taking care of a human kid, but she also feels sad because with all of his power, Sukuna lost the thing that was most important to him in the end.

But also, he’s definitely going to kill and eat a god. Perhaps he has become a better friend, or a little more patient, or has learned to enjoy certain people more, but he is and always will be, the King.

XXX

Yuji walks with Ryokun down a path that evening.

Choso walks on the other side, in a thick black coat and white scarf that Yuji gave him as a gift.

Ryokun slips on a patch of ice on the walkway, but before he can fall, two hands grab his and hold him up.

Ryokun and Choso do not vibe, but Yuji has been trying to teach Ryokun to do better, to think about how there was a time when he didn’t have any friends or anyone to care about him either, and everyone took care of him.

Now Choso didn’t have anyone either, so it was time for him to show kindness too.

He doesn’t want to disappoint Yuji, or anyone else that has been good to him, so when he rights himself, he keeps holding onto Choso’s hand.

It makes Yuji so happy, but he doesn’t make a big deal about it because Ryokun sometimes gets weirdly embarrassed and denies when he’s being nice. It’s just a very silly little thing he does, maybe because kindness doesn’t come as naturally as mischief.

It means a lot to Choso too, to receive even the slightest acknowledgement for the little brother of the little brother.

They are going to the dorm where most of the other students live, to a big common area because there’s going to be a party.

Nobara found a bunch of Christmas decorations in a closet a few days prior, including a tree, and so for the past couple of days, they’ve been working on putting together a little celebration.

As Yuji’s group approaches the dorm, Yuko Ozawa arrives, having been invited by Yuji, and Ryokun runs over to hug her even before he can, because of course he does.

Sayuri was not permitted to attend a party at only a few days old, so she is at home with her mother while Satoru serves as a bit of a nuisance as always.

There are all kinds of dishes cooking in the kitchen, and food laid out on a table. Sweets and treats, and egg nog, hot cider, and cocoa.

While Yuji hangs out with Yuko for the first time in quite awhile, Ryokun sits and helps Nobara make a popcorn garland for the tree. And by ‘help,’ he eats some of the popcorn and then says it is gross and discusses whether they are hanging it on the tree because it is bad.

Off to one side, Mai and Maki are sitting together, a rare sight in the past, but Maki has finally told her younger twin that she hasn’t been allowed to go on missions because she was going to become a mother. This piece of information is revelatory, because as much as Mai wishes her twin would just submit to the Zenin clan’s cruelty, she can’t stomach the idea of carrying the abuse on to a new generation.

Not far from them, Megumi is introducing Tsumiki to everyone. She’s in a wheelchair because her legs are weak from a year in a coma, but she is glad that Megumi has made friends and grown so much.

Kento Nanami isn’t sure why he was invited as he’s not a teacher or a student, but perhaps it is nice after such a difficult year to drink egg nog and watch the students eat too many snacks and play games to a soundtrack of raucous laughter over Christmas music playing in the background.

Gakuganji, Yaga, Kusakabe, and Utahime drink beer at a little table in the corner, trying to keep an eye on the kids. Sorcerers were known to be a little bit rowdy, but they’re all behaving uncharacteristically well. Actually, their behavior just seems to get better and better as the overseers get drunker and pay less attention.

Nobara finds there’s no star or angel or any other tree topper in the box with the tree decorations and wraps Ryokun up with Christmas lights before standing on a chair and putting him on top of the tree.

Yuji looks up and his child who he is responsible for is wrapped in electrical wires dotted in lights and sitting stop a giant fake tree.

“Hey! What are you doing up there?”

Ryokun spreads his arms and says, “I’m the star!”

“No, you are a baby wrapped in electrical wires. I’m taking you down, one second.”

“I wanna be shiny!”

“Nope, no shiny! Who made you shiny?”

“Nobara-rara!”

Yuji fusses at Nobara, and she gets even with him by putting on a movie for Ryokun. The movie is Home Alone, and Yuji does not realize what she has done until it is too late. Yuji can almost hear him having thoughts as he stares at the screen, unblinking. Then he has a sugar crash from eating Christmas cookies and falls into a deep sleep.

The students and the others laugh, they play, they snap pictures, they tell jokes, they talk about their dreams, and they live, because it is Christmas Eve, and the world didn’t end.

In some dark parallel dimension, at this time, half of them have died, and the other half are fighting about whether they can even go back to get the dead off the battlefield. They’ve glimpsed the monster that will end the world they grew up in but have only begun to realize how helpless their situation is, unaware that the night will last for seventeen years.

But that’s not happening here, not to them.

They get to be happy.

As Yuji carries a sleeping Ryokun home at two in the morning, with Yuko and Choso walking alongside him, he thinks about everything.

He wonders if his visions have gone away forever, and if they’ll ever know the truth about some of the questions that remain unanswered.

Yuji still thinks from time to time about how they never really found out who Ryokun is. He knew so many names, so he was there in the future that Yuji’s future self had traveled from. Yet he never appeared in any of Yuji’s visions for some reason. Even in the present, they don’t really know where he came from or why he just appeared that night on the roof.

Was the truth simply lost to time?

Maybe there are things that were best that way.

Yuji doesn’t know why he feels this way, but he thinks maybe Ryokun has some very important purpose in the world, and it’s his job to prepare him to do whatever that thing is—to make sure that he’s strong enough, kind enough, and courageous enough to fulfill whatever his destiny is.

Then again, maybe that’s how everyone feels about the child they’re looking after.

When he looks over at Yuko, who is sleeping over, but not sleeping over like that, she is giving him a rather warm little smile. It makes him feel so happy he feels like he might burst. He wishes he could tell her that they’re definitely supposed to live happily ever after and he’s so very excited because this time, they’ll get to stay together.

Yuko adores Yuji so much but wants to make a joke asking him how many brothers he’s going to have next time she visits. He started at zero, then had one, and now there are three and none of them get along with each other? It’s one of the funniest things, just watching him exist in his element, surrounded by people who just want to be near him.

Yuji and Yuko spend most of the rest of the night sitting in his room, talking about everything until they fall asleep.

Morning comes and brings with it a new age where the students and teachers will continue living on together, in as much peace as sorcerers might be expected to have, free to pursue their dreams and follow their hopes.

The End