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English
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Published:
2024-10-02
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427
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1/1
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19
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82
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Compassion // Salvation

Summary:

‘Christ, Suguru!’ Watching as the other boy plunged his knife into the top of the gourd, viciously sawing a circle around the circumference of it, Satoru feigned a gasp of horror. ‘Do you have to be so rough with the poor guy?’

Blowing his bangs out of his eyes, Suguru frowned. ‘It isn’t alive, Satoru, it can’t feel anything.’

‘Sure he can!’ Satoru argued, stifling a snort when Suguru started furiously scooping out innards. He was beginning to wonder if his best friend didn’t have a bit of a sadistic streak. ‘And he has a name, Suguru!’

Satoru thinks of pumpkins.

Notes:

Cooked this up for a little Spooktober prompt and accidentally created a masterpiece, I fear. Reactions from friends told me I shouldn't let this one become lost to my Twitter media tab, so I'm posting it here!

For the JJK nerds among you, the title is a heavy hint at how this story is going to go. I'll elaborate in the end notes for those who need it! ♥

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

‘Christ, Suguru!’

Watching as the other boy plunged his knife into the top of the gourd, viciously sawing a circle around the circumference of it, Satoru feigned a gasp of horror.

‘Do you have to be so rough with the poor guy?’

Blowing his bangs out of his eyes, Suguru frowned. ‘It isn’t alive, Satoru, it can’t feel anything.’

‘Sure he can!’ Satoru argued, stifling a snort when Suguru started furiously scooping out innards. He was beginning to wonder if his best friend didn’t have a bit of a sadistic streak. ‘And he has a name, Suguru!’

‘Fine,’ Suguru sighed, wiping a stray bit of pumpkin flesh from his cheek with a thumb. ‘What’s he called?’

‘Jack, duh.’

Rolling his eyes, Suguru nodded his head at the untouched pumpkin between Satoru’s hands. ‘What’s yours called then?’

Following his gaze, Satoru shrugged. ‘Jack,’ he said. ‘But I’m gonna gut him through the bottom instead.’ He threw a disparaging look at the butchery Suguru was committing. ‘He deserves some dignity in death.’

It was supposed to be a pumpkin carving competition but — to absolutely no one’s surprise — there was no competition to be found in the end. Among the mess of botched nose jobs his schoolmates had inflicted on their poor pumpkins, Satoru’s goofy little guy stood out like a masterpiece — not least because he was the only one who’d chosen to disembowel it from the bottom.

‘That’s not Jack, that’s Gojō Satoru.’

He wasn’t surprised that Suguru was sore about the sorry state of his pumpkin, second place to Satoru’s for the second year running. Grinning — because Satoru thought he had rendered his sunglasses rather beautifully — he grabbed one of the discarded knives from the table, activating Infinity to stop Suguru from interfering as he carved a long thin triangle to the right of the second place pumpkin’s eyes.

‘There,’ he said, ignoring Suguru’s whines of complaint as he pushed their pumpkins together. ‘Now yours is Getō Suguru. They can shine side by side forever!’

Suguru only shoved at him. ‘They’ll be rotten in a month, you idiot.’

‘Then they’ll rot side by side, too!’ Batting his eyelashes at his best friend, Satoru pitched his voice high. ‘Isn’t that romantic, Suguru?’

 

---

 

Perhaps it made sense. It was Halloween, after all.

But as the despair of the Prison Realm collapsed in on him, Satoru didn’t remember Suguru. No, staring up at the smiling face of a corpse, the man he loved scooped from the skull and left to rot…

Perhaps it made sense, but Satoru only thought of pumpkins.

Notes:

I cackled maniacally when I landed on this idea. Knocked it out the park, don't you think?

Anyway, the title is a reference to the "Jack" in this story. The kanji in Kenjaku's name mean "compassion" and "salvation", the irony of which Yuki points out when she learns their name from Tengen. The depths of my JJK nerdery know no bounds; I weave disgusting symbolism into my stories by accident at this point — gold star for you if you spotted the other references to canon!

If you enjoyed this (lol) please leave a comment! ♥ Otherwise, come say hello on Tumblr, Instagram, and Bluesky — I'm @fushiglow everywhere!


EDIT (6.10.24): The incredible talent that is lils (who has made beautiful art for Over the Threshold and In His Shadow previously) has created a playlist inspired by this fic! The titles of the songs in order spell out something of a poem or "dialogue" which mirrors the story told (and SatoSugu's story on the whole), and it's the most beautiful thing. I was particularly struck by this part:

Die with a smile
Three years of youth overflowing
Eyes, nose, lips
The man, Saturn

 

[A] call of silence

 

Eventually forever young [and] still with you

In her notes, lils pointed out that "Eyes, nose, lips" is a set of three, like the "three years of youth" which come flooding into Satoru's brain when he sees Suguru's "eyes, nose, lips" — the only three features carved on a pumpkin. I'm going to throw up.

Meanwhile, "The man, Saturn" references the confusion between Suguru and Kenjaku. In lils' words, "Saturnalia (which somewhat points to festivities and Halloween) transitions to a new year → new age with Getō to Kenjaku. Saturn, the god of time, consumer of living beings. Conflating man (Getō) with Saturn (Kenjaku, who stole time from them)." I also think there are plenty of sickening clues to be found in the song Saturn, itself — “stuck in this paradigm”, "sick of this head of mine", "stuck in this terradome" (terror dome).

Finally, in "[A] call of silence", lils points out that Suguru is no longer, only his voice that calls to Satoru. However, I think there's perhaps also something in the idea that Satoru calls back to that silence anyway and, of course, Suguru (unexpectedly?) responds. Really beautiful stuff; lils is an artist through and through!