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“I think I’m in love with Suguru,” Gojo blurts out in the middle of lunch, and that’s how Shoko knows she’s got her work cut out for her.
“Wow,” Shoko says. “Congrats.”
Gojo stares at her. He’s got his sunglasses on, but that doesn’t make his stare any less unnerving, and Shoko resists the urge to fidget uncomfortably. Gojo doesn’t realize the effect of a simple gaze from the Six Eyes, at least not yet, but Shoko supposes that’s for the best. Gojo feels guilty enough when he forgets to undo Infinity while training with her and Geto, and she suspects letting him know the unintentional pressure of a simple stare will only pile onto that guilt.
“I don’t know what to do,” Gojo finally admits, breaking the stare by looking away. “I mean, I can’t do anything about it, right?”
Shoko taps her chopsticks together. “Sure you can,” she responds. “You know, like talking to him about it.”
Gojo stares at her like she’s vomited a deluge of flowers in front of him. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asks, and he sounds so genuinely confused—like the idea of conversing with Geto is so utterly beyond the realms of possibility—that Shoko realizes she really does have her work cut out for her.
She opens her mouth to try and convince him otherwise, before realizing what an attempt in vain it would be and closing her mouth. Across from her, Gojo tilts his head.
“What?”
“Never mind,” Shoko mutters.
They’ll figure it out, Shoko thinks as she finishes the last of her lunch. They’ll figure it out, right?
“I think I’m in love with Satoru,” Geto tells her the very next day, and Shoko thinks, never mind.
“Great,” is her bland response, but when silence stretches out afterwards, she looks up from her phone. Geto’s brows are pinched with worry, and he’s staring a hole in the ground. “You okay?” Shoko asks.
“I can’t,” is Geto’s confusing response. “I can’t be in love with him.”
Shoko stares at him flatly. “What?”
When Geto looks up, there’s something wild in his eyes, and when Shoko’s gaze travels to his hands, she finds them clenched together in a white-knuckled grip.
“I can’t be in love with him,” he repeats.
Shoko blinks slowly. “Why not?” she asks when Geto continues staring at her silently.
“Because,” Geto says. “Because—because he’s Satoru.”
“Right,” Shoko says. Then, “what?”
“Oh my god,” Geto says, and then he walks out of the classroom. Shoko watches him leave, then rests her head with a sigh on the desk below.
They’re not going to figure it out, Shoko realizes, not on their own.
It’s a good thing, she thinks at first, that they’ve both spilled their respective secrets to Shoko. Although she’s a little disgruntled at the thought of having to play messenger, she figures that’s a relatively easy solution to this dilemma—before realizing that Gojo and Geto would both probably laugh in her face if she told them directly. No, the news couldn’t come from her. If they were going to believe it, they would have to hear it from each other.
Then, maybe it’s not such a good thing they’ve both spilled their respective secrets to Shoko. Messenger is one thing, but matchmaker? This is starting to sound like a pain.
So she decides to start with something simple, something small and easy. That night, she scrounges around the small trash can in her room to find a half-written essay in Gojo’s easily noticeable scrawl. It’s often that the three of them do homework or other miscellaneous work in her room, and she doesn’t have to sift long in her trash to find the balled up piece of paper. She squints at the near-unreadable handwriting for a few moments, before pulling out her own piece of paper. With as much accuracy as she can muster, she scribbles out an I think I’m in love with you on the paper in Gojo’s handwriting, and once satisfied, she sneaks out of her room and down the hallway to slip it in Geto’s desk.
That should do it, she thinks.
The next morning, as Shoko expects, she finds the two of them huddled around the small scrap of paper.
“But who gave it?” Gojo’s asking as she walks in, and it’s with some dismay that Shoko watches Geto shake his head.
“I don’t know,” he admits, turning the paper over like the material will give him any clue as to its owner. “I can’t tell.”
Shoko coughs once and pretends to peer at the paper herself. “Doesn’t that kind of look like Gojo’s handwriting?” she asks, and Gojo turns to stare at her with wide eyes, but Geto immediately shakes his head.
“No, Satoru uses a different stroke order for this character,” is Geto’s infuriatingly simple response, and Shoko resists the urge to slam her head into a nearby wall. “Shoko, this isn’t… you, is it?”
They’re both staring at her now. Shoko meets their gaze evenly.
“Hell no,” she responds with faltering. When they keep staring at her, she looks away. “It might be an upperclassman, I guess.”
“I guess,” Geto says after a long and uncomfortable pause. Gojo finally looks away from Shoko to stare a hole in the side of Geto’s head instead. There’s something vaguely uncomfortable in Gojo’s expression, and Shoko holds her breath for a moment—was this enough to make him talk?
But no—the moment passes, and Gojo tears his eyes away. Shoko lets herself let out a small sigh of disappointment. Back to the drawing board then. It wasn’t like she’d made the situation worse or anything, though, right?
“Someone else,” Gojo seethes in her room, pacing back and forth, “is in love with Suguru, and—”
Well, Shoko thinks, as Gojo continues rambling, maybe this backfired.
“—who the fuck could it be?” Gojo finally stops his pacing long enough to ask Shoko. Shoko shrugs lazily in response.
“I thought it was you,” she says, and Gojo gapes at her.
“I still can’t believe you seriously suggested to Suguru that I was the one who wrote that—”
“The handwriting looked like yours,” Shoko mutters, and yeah, maybe she was a little annoyed that her attempt at mimicry had been so easily and immediately disregarded.
Gojo’s expression twists with confusion. “It obviously wasn’t.”
“Obvious only to you and Geto, maybe.”
“Yeah,” Gojo says, and to Shoko’s continued dismay, he lets out a disgustingly lovesick sigh. “He really knows me so well, huh?”
“Get out,” Shoko says flatly. “If you’re just going to pine after him in here, get out.”
“Shokooooooooooo—”
“Out.”
So the letter didn’t work. In fact, it’s pretty clearly done the opposite. Now, any time Shoko’s in a room alone with Gojo, Gojo talks her ear off about “Suguru’s mystery admirer” and “they can’t possibly know him like I do!” and “it wasn’t even a good letter, I mean, I would have done something better,” and “do you think Suguru knows who it is?” and “do you think Suguru likes them back?” and “what the hell do I do if Suguru likes them back?” and “what do I do if Suguru loves them back?” and quite honestly, Shoko’s done with it. Any time Shoko’s alone in a room with Geto, on the other hand, the room fills with a suffocating, tense sort of silence that Shoko doesn’t have any idea how to breach. She doesn’t know how to read Geto’s tells like Gojo does, but she is still Geto’s friend, and even she can tell something’s wrong. Maybe it’s in the way his eyebags grow darker by the day, or the way his clothes seem to hang looser and looser, or maybe it’s just his growing reticence to talk. She doesn’t know how to bridge the gap herself, though, and she can’t help but think a lot of her problems would be solved if it were Gojo and Geto in a room alone together.
Now that’s a thought, Shoko realizes, and she backpedals on her thought process to sit on the idea a little longer. It was a stupid idea—unbearably stupid, like the sort from romcoms—but at the same time, maybe just stupid enough for her two best friends.
It’s easy enough to convince Geto to wait in a darkened storage room alone, with how little energy he seems to have—Gojo puts up a bit more of a fight, asking Shoko incessant questions on the walk through the hallway, but he stands still in confusion for long enough upon reaching the barely lit storage room for Shoko to slam the door closed behind him. There’s the expected immediate pounding and confused yells from Gojo, but they subside soon. Shoko half wonders if Gojo might use Hollow Purple on the door for an excuse to get out, but as she watches the door warily from the distance, nothing of the sort happens, and she relaxes enough to approach it carefully and press an ear to the door.
She can’t hear much—they’re definitely talking, she can hear some shuffling and quiet murmurs, but the content of their conversation, she can’t seem to make out at all. As quietly as she can, she unlocks the door before slipping away—hopefully they’d only realize the door was unlocked after their conversation, but this way, Shoko doesn’t have to bear witness to the worst case scenario of them stumbling out of the storage room with their hands all over each other. Shoko would get the results of her experiment eventually—probably from an excitable message from Gojo—and the knowledge of that is knowledge enough.
Later that evening, she does get a message from Gojo, but it’s not what she’d been expecting.
from sunglasses 7:10 P.M.
hey thanks for locking us in the storage room
to sunglasses 7:10 P.M.
you’re welcome
did you have fun confessing your undying love
from sunglasses 7:11 P.M.
?
is that what you thought we were doing???????
to sunglasses 7:11 P.M.
yes..
from sunglasses 7:11 P.M.
oh
uh
no
we just
talked
suguru finally told me about some things hes been thinking about
and how it’s been affecting him
and how he thinks he needs some time off
or someone to talk to
we hadnt talked properly in so long but
in the closet we didnt have a choice
so we finally talked
hes still not in a great space
but
hes better now
we’re better now
so
thanks
Shoko blinks at her phone. That was not her intention, but—well, this result isn’t too terrible either.
to sunglasses 7:16 P.M.
you’re welcome… i think
hope Geto feels better
let him know he can also talk to me whenever
if he needs someone
from sunglasses 7:16 P.M.
yeah i will
thanks again
<3
Shoko flips her phone shut and splays backwards on her bed. As she blinks up at the ceiling, she wonders if a larger part of her should be upset that yet another attempt of her plan didn’t quite work out, but when she remembers Geto’s recent demeanor and Gojo’s latest texts, it’s a small smile that she feels curved on her lips. This accidental intervention—she’s not sure what exactly it is, but there’s something that tells her it’s made all the difference in the world. It’s probably egotistical of her to think it, but the feeling persists, and so Shoko lets that thought drift her off to sleep.
For the years after, life is—for lack of a better word—good. It’s not perfect, life typically isn’t, but they graduate, and things change, but they also don’t. Almost immediately after graduating, Gojo and Geto both come back to Jujutsu High as teachers, Shoko comes back as the school’s expert in reverse cursed technique, and nothing really changes. Geto was slow to recover after whatever he was going through in their second year—what exactly, Shoko still doesn’t know, but she suspects it has something to do with the way Geto still hesitates before talking to waiters or cashiers whenever they go on an outing—but over the years, he’s warmed back to his original countenance. Shoko’s not sure how exactly, but if she had to bet on it, it probably had something to do with how Gojo latched himself onto Geto after that storage room conversation—not that he hadn’t already been doing that, but after that single conversation, Shoko notices that the two never go on solo missions again. Shoko would joke about their codependency, but she watches the way Geto looks at Gojo and concludes that it might be better to keep it to herself.
So things are different, but all the more the same. Which means, Shoko only realizes when she visits Gojo and Geto’s apartment and finds not one, not two, but four children staring at her curiously, her two idiot best friends are still in love with each other, and neither knows the fact.
“Are you guys married?” she can’t help but blurt out when Gojo sticks his head out of the kitchen. “Did you—did I miss something? Did you forget to invite me to a wedding, or—?”
Gojo tilts his head to the side. “What are you talking about?”
“You both live together. You have four children together?”
“Oh, did we never introduce you?” Geto plods out of the bedroom as Gojo ducks back into the kitchen. “This is Megumi, Tsumiki, Nanako, and Mimiko,” he says, patting each child once on the head as he rattles off their names. Shoko gawks at him as he ushers them towards their respective bedrooms, and she continues gawking even when he comes back and takes a seat on the couch.
“So,” Shoko starts weakly. “You guys are just. Like this.”
It’s Geto’s turn to tilt his head to the side. “Yes?”
“Oh,” Shoko says. “Oh my god.”
And then Gojo comes out of the kitchen again, casually draping his arms around Geto’s shoulders and resting his head on the top of Geto’s. “What are we talking about?”
Shoko can’t take it any more. She can’t. Any carefully curated plan she might have had, might have tried to create, entirely flies out of her head in the face of such brazen audacity, and she really should just cut her losses and leave, but instead—
“You two know you’re in love with each other, right?” she blurts out incredulously.
Geto startles, slamming the top of his head into Gojo’s chin. Gojo reels back, but otherwise doesn’t seem fazed, choosing instead to stare with wide eyes at Shoko. The panic evident on both their faces is actually quite comical, Shoko thinks, and she somewhat regrets that she doesn’t have a way to capture a picture of it.
Gojo’s eventually the first to break the awkward silence.
“Ha,” he says out loud with a fake grin. “Ha, ha. That’s—that’s really funny, Shoko.”
Geto’s expression does something strange, but it eventually flattens to a placid mask. “Yeah,” he agrees with a weak smile. “It’s a… funny joke.”
Shoko wonders if the frustration she feels would be better manifested by slamming her own head into a wall or slamming their heads into a wall. Right now, she’s leaning towards the latter.
“You,” she says, pointing a damning finger in Gojo’s direction, “told me you’re in love with him. Five years ago.” She narrows her eyes. “And you,” she continues, moving her finger to Geto, “told me you’re in love with him. Five years ago.” She throws her hands in the air. “Connect the dots, dumbasses.”
The next silence that follows is fragile, and this time, it’s Geto who breaks it.
“That’s… not funny, Shoko,” he murmurs. “You shouldn’t joke about things like that, it’s—” His jaw works. “It’s not fair to Satoru.”
Gojo, who’s been making increasingly frantic gestures at Shoko to stop talking, stills for half a moment before turning his wide-eyed stare to Geto. “What?” When Geto’s lips stay closed, his eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean it’s not fair to me? If anything, it’s not fair to you—” He catches himself, cutting his words off, but it’s a little too late. Geto’s eyes widen.
“Not fair to me—only me?”
“I—” Gojo starts to splutter. “Wait, I don’t—” He turns to Shoko. “You’re not joking?”
Shoko’s only response is a flat stare.
“Oh,” Gojo says stupidly. “Oh.”
“Unbelievable,” Shoko mutters when the next three minutes pass by with Gojo and Geto simply staring at each other. “You two are unbelievable.” She grabs her coat from the nearby coat stand, only because she’s pretty sure she won’t want to witness what comes next. “Send me an invite to the wedding, I guess.”
The very next day, Shoko gets a cream-colored envelope in her mail.
Took them long enough, she thinks. Now, just a plus one for the wedding…