Archive of Our Own ^beta

I. FICTIONAL ORPHANS

Tsumiki once asked her mother why she loved her. She wondered every time she heard it, on the rare occasion that her mother actually put her to bed: a kiss on the forehead, good night, Tsumiki, I love you.

“Because you’re my child,” she said.

Tsumiki wanted her to say anything else, to name any of the thousand things she did every day to squeeze a drop of affection from her mother’s mouth or hands. Because you clean the flat every day before I’m home. Because you cook for me when I’m too tired. Because you get up and pack your lunch and go to school, all by yourself, and no one ever had to tell you how.

“Is that really the only reason?”

“Yes,” she said, not looking at Tsumiki, “it’s the only reason.”

This is love, to Tsumiki, until she is five years old: she wakes up before her mother, brushes her teeth, and puts on her school uniform with all the buttons correctly matched. She goes to kindergarten and gets the best grades in the class. She is friendly and generous and always kind. She drinks up the smiles of her classmates and teachers so that she can store them deep in her chest when she leaves the school gates. She heats up leftovers or fumbles with the stovetop until she manages some semblance of dinner and then sits in the single room she shares with her mother.

Tsumiki waits, and waits. Sometimes she falls asleep. Sometimes the click of the door startles her awake, and those are the best nights of all because after her mother showers and eats she tucks Tsumiki in and kisses her forehead. Good night, Tsumiki. I love you.

This is love to Tsumiki. Then Megumi appears, and everything changes.

---

Megumi is four years old and he knows pretty much everything about how the world works.

Well, he’s not so stupid as to think he knows everything, but he knows everything that’s important to the way his world works. Megumi’s world is his father, probably for worse rather than for better. He is a swindling little bitch and a pathetic man-whore, according to the rotating cast of women after the starry-eyed phase and the silently tolerant phase both pass. Megumi has learned the phases of his father’s girlfriends, on whom he generally depends for food and water. In turn, he learns how to predict when they will say I’ve had enough!, call his father some vulgar phrases and call Megumi a disturbing and unpleasant child, and then leave.

It’s in the lulls between girlfriends that Megumi likes his father best. It’s probably because he actually sees his father during the lulls. Megumi wonders a few times why his father doesn’t just leave him and go on with his life, because it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t want to bother with Megumi unless there is no one else around to do it for him. But maybe he’s just irresponsible, because when he does bother with Megumi he seems to enjoy it enough. He tells Megumi stories he doesn’t really understand and carries him around on his shoulders like Megumi weighs nothing at all. He plays shadow-puppets with him when their electricity shuts off and they have to survive by candlelight. There’s one, the dog shadow puppet, that his father is especially insistent that Megumi gets exactly right, folding his fingers over each other until an eerily realistic dog grins back at them from the cracked plaster of the wall.

“I have a feeling about you, Megumi,” his father laughed once as they played, cupping his cheek in his enormous palm. “You’re going to be fine there. You are going to be more than fine.”

Megumi remembers the moment because of the rarity of that gentle touch, and because of the strange sparking feeling he felt coursing through his body when he brought his palms together and saw the dog’s silhouette dancing on the far wall. He doesn’t remember wondering where there was. Maybe he already accepted, in some childish part of him that didn’t yet know the words to verbalize it, that his father was not staying forever. Just like the girlfriends who his father showers with affection until their money and patience runs out, he is holding out on Megumi until the time comes.

This is love, to Megumi: always conditional, always selfish, and always temporary. That’s why he doesn’t believe it for one moment when a dark-haired woman and a little replica of her appear one day, a perfect mirror of Megumi and his father, and the adults inform them that they are in love. He doesn’t believe it for one moment when they sign a contract that makes all four of them family, even though the woman and girl take the Fushiguro name. The girl, Fushiguro Tsumiki (a false and certainly temporary name), smiles at him broadly and tells him they’re going to get along great. Megumi has never gotten along with anyone in his life, so he glares at her to try and convince her to drop the act. She doesn’t relent.

It’s fine, though, because it’s only a matter of time. Megumi understands the way his world works.

---

Some of the old girlfriends had children. Babies were okay, equal parts entertaining and annoying. The ones who were old enough to talk were all parts annoying because they always wanted to talk. One of Megumi’s favorite principles was not talking unless necessary. It avoided unnecessary conflict. Miscommunication was not an issue when there was no communication.

Megumi could never relate to the other children because they were too childish. They always whined about sharing and cried when toys broke, problems that seemed trivial to Megumi. It was probably because the girlfriends, who were usually richer than Megumi’s father (this, Megumi understands is why many of them called him a gold-digger), had the energy and time to coddle their children. They’d sometimes try to coddle Megumi, too, until they grew frustrated with his lack of cuteness and frustrated with his deadbeat father.

Fushiguro Kiyoka is past the point of coddling. She is younger than many of the old girlfriends, so she has spent the larger part of her life raising a child and perhaps that has made her tired of them. She isn’t mean, but she isn’t nice either. She mostly seems tired. Unlike the old, richer girlfriends, she works nearly constantly. On the occasion that she’s home, if she’s not in a bad mood, she lets Megumi and Tsumiki do whatever they want, and if she’s in a bad mood, she doesn’t let them do anything they want. This is annoying, because Megumi would rather not obey the whims of a moody adult, but it could be worse. At least when Megumi’s father is around, her mood is mostly not-bad rather than mostly bad.

Tsumiki, though, is the polar opposite. She attacks life with an eagerness and cheeriness that Megumi can’t understand at all. She is always on time for school and takes it upon herself to make sure Megumi is too, although he never once asked her to wake him up and toss his school uniform in his face. Her ponytail is never out of place, she never bites her nails, and she has a brilliant flashing smile despite the gap in her front teeth. She does all the housework in the hours between the end of school and her mother’s return from work, something Megumi has never even thought to do for the old girlfriends.

Sure, Tsumiki is annoying. The chirp of her voice, the stupid songs she sings while cleaning, her constant positivity -- they’re all annoying. But Tsumiki, unlike every other child Megumi has met, is not childish. If anything, he kind of respects her. Tsumiki is smart, efficient, and independent. If there’s no food, she’ll buy it; if there’s no meal, she’ll make it. If he was more like her, he might not have had to endure the old girlfriends as much in order to benefit from their caretaking.

And most importantly, Tsumiki leaves him alone. She’s super chatty, but in exchange for listening to her rambles she doesn’t insist that Megumi talk to her in return. She doesn’t try to touch or cuddle Megumi if he’s tired and annoyed. They learn to peacefully coexist in the same space, in relative solitude with Megumi’s father usually gone and Tsumiki’s mother always at work.

Yes, they are poor, and kind of hungry, and despite her best efforts to look perfect Tsumiki gets picked on at school for her too-small uniform. Tsumiki’s mother gets irritable and snappy the longer Megumi’s father is gone. But irrationally, things feel better to Megumi than they used to. Maybe Tsumiki’s positivity has rubbed off on him, or maybe he’s starting to miss his father less. Maybe he misses his father less because of Tsumiki. But whatever the reason, Megumi slowly starts to think that if life continues to march on in this way, things might actually end up okay.

---

“You’re home.”

Megumi tries to sound disinterested, but by his father’s wicked smirk Megumi knows he isn’t hiding an ounce of his shock or excitement. He’s home. He came home. Huge hands envelop him and he’s hoisted into the air. His chest drops as he stares down from the immense height from which he’s dangling, straight into his father’s pitch-dark eyes.

“Miss me?” he rumbles.

“Of course not,” Megumi attempts, and his father bellows laughter before swinging him back onto the ground. Megumi stumbles and catches himself.

“Yeah, why would you? You have a nice new family now.”

“They’re not my family,” Megumi mutters. You are. But he doesn’t say it. It’s not true, however much he wants it to be. Whatever family is, it’s not this man. He tells himself this until he believes it.

“Did Kiyoka make anything good today? I’m starving,” he announces as Megumi trails after him into the kitchen.

“No,” says Megumi, which is true. The only food in the house is the egg fried rice that Tsumiki made yesterday, and he is not letting his father touch that. He’d devour it without even tasting it and then forget to thank Tsumiki.

“Sucks. Let’s order food then.”

“We can’t pay…” Megumi begins, but his father is already calling for takeout.

“It’s on me,” he says with a wink after hanging up, and then waves a modest wad of cash at him. “Your dad got paid today.”

Megumi thinks about telling him that Tsumiki’s school uniform tore last week. That Megumi's shoes are wearing out. That every month they cut their own hair in the flickering light of the bathroom mirror.

“When are you leaving?” he finally settles on saying.

“Oh, I’ll stick around for a couple of days. But work beckons, you know?”

Megumi does not know what beckons means. But that is beside the point.

“No, when are you never coming back?”

“Hmm?”

“If you’re planning on never coming back one day, you should do it now. That’s all.”

“How dramatic,” his father laughs. “I’m not never coming back.” He considers for a minute, his head tilting slightly. “Well, maybe you are, in a sense. But it’s for the better.”

Megumi does not understand a word of what his father is saying. Then again, he never has.

“I’m just saying. I’m tired of waiting.”

“You won’t be for much longer,” he hums. “I have everything figured out for you.”

“And for Tsumiki?”

“She has Kiyoka, of course.”

“Kiyoka is just like you. She’s also deciding when to leave.”

His father laughs again, another rattling sound that slices Megumi with red-hot anger. “You’re so distrustful, Megumi. But that’ll serve you well. Anyway, Kiyoka is a good woman. She’s not going anywhere.”

“She’s not a good woman,” Megumi tries to say, but at that moment Tsumiki opens the door.

“Megumi, I’m worried about --” Tsumiki catches sight of the extra body in the room and breaks into a shy smile. “Oh, hi. It’s good to see you’re back.”

“What are you so worried about?” Megumi’s father asks, ever-present smirk widening. He must be wondering what childish things five-year-olds are worrying about. Megumi wonders what grown-up things fathers worry about, because it’s clearly not their sons and step-daughters.

Tsumiki looks at Megumi, and then back at his father. Her smile broadens.

“Oh, nothing at all.”

The three of them eat pizza. Tsumiki scolds him for getting into a fight at school. His father muses that if Megumi breaks up fights he can beat up two people and get rewarded for it. Megumi wonders if this is the reason for the cash which has paid for their dinner, but he can’t imagine his father ever performing anything resembling a good deed.

Megumi knows that one day, his father is going to get bored of them. He’s never been surer of anything. But sleepily full for one night, the first night in weeks, he can’t bring himself to believe it the way he usually does.

Of course, because life is unflinchingly disappointing, this is his father’s last night.

Just as Megumi expected, they wake up in the morning and he’s gone, even though he said he’d stay for at least the weekend. Just as Megumi expected, days roll into weeks. But then weeks roll into months. Megumi sometimes has dreams with amused dark eyes and a rumbling voice, but he can’t quite remember the face that belongs to them anymore.

His father is gone. This is just what Megumi expected. He tells himself this until he believes it.

---

After Megumi’s father stops coming back, the apartment starts to feel like a time bomb. It becomes more important than ever for Tsumiki to do everything right, keep out of sight and out of trouble, and to be as helpful as possible.

Unfortunately, Megumi is not very good at doing everything right the way Tsumiki is. Maybe she learned it from being her mother’s child, because Megumi’s father never seemed to care that much that his children were good children. To Tsumiki’s mother, though, it’s very important. Tsumiki doesn’t bother to try to understand the way adults act, and why they all have their own rules, but she will follow the ones that apply to her.

“My mother doesn’t like it when you talk back,” Tsumiki tries to explain. “And she doesn’t like it if we’re lazy.”

“But there isn’t anything to do. You do all the chores in an hour every day.”

“Still, try to find something to do. Especially when she comes back from work. It makes her happy. Because she’s so busy with work, she likes it if she sees that we’re helping out.”

“Why would I pretend to be busy to make someone happy?” he snaps. “That’s a waste of energy.”

“See, that’s talking back,” Tsumiki says as patiently as she can manage. “Try not to do that.”

“I’m going to say whatever I want,” Megumi says flatly, and that’s that.

These days, Tsumiki’s mother oscillates between exhaustion and anger. On any given evening, everything Megumi and Tsumiki do will either wash right over her or irritate her to the point of cruelty. While Tsumiki’s mother has always been tired and hard to talk to, she has never been cruel, not until now.

Today, Megumi’s act of taking a second scoop of rice is the catalyst. Tsumiki sits at tense attention, looking for a way to diffuse the situation, while Megumi looks bored, as he always does.

“Two mouths to feed, two pairs of clothes to buy, when I never even asked for one. I should have never signed those marriage papers. How stupid I was to think he’d actually share the burden.”

“Yeah, that was stupid,” Megumi mutters. “Even I knew he’d skip out on you.”

Tsumiki’s heart sinks.

“You inherited his arrogance, you know? That better-than-everything attitude while being good for nothing. At least Tsumiki is pleasant. I don’t think you’re capable of making anyone even smile.”

“Mom, stop it, please,” Tsumiki says.

“He doesn’t even care,” she responds acidly. “Look at him.”

Sure enough, Megumi is staring into the distance, unmoved. She desperately wishes he’d magically start following all her advice this instant.

“He’s just tired,” Tsumiki says, trying to look as innocent as possible. Her mother is right: Tsumiki is pleasant, and she’s worked very hard at it. She knows exactly how to make her mother soften. “Can we just all go to sleep and think about Megumi’s dad in the morning?”

Her mother says nothing, but the tight line of her mouth relaxes. Finally, she nods, and Tsumiki ushers Megumi into their shared bedroom. Tsumiki doesn’t risk going back outside to brush her teeth; she lies right down on her futon and Megumi follows suit. They lie there in the darkness. Megumi breathes in and out, calm and even.

“Are you okay?” Tsumiki ventures.

“Yes,” he says shortly.

“My mother was pretty mean.”

“It’s alright. It doesn’t bother me.”

If he really doesn’t care, something must have taught him not to. Children aren’t born not caring. It’s adults who don’t care, and if her mother has taught her anything, it’s the toughness of life that makes them that way. In that way, maybe Megumi has already grown up, in the way Tsumiki feels that she has, able to move past her first instinct and act however she needs to. Maybe it’s the way he survives, by not caring, by never letting anything reach him.

The darkness stretches between them. Tsumiki decides to try something.

“Good night, Megumi. I love you.”

“Why?” he scoffs.

Tsumiki falters. “Because you --” because you’re my brother, but it isn't. Tsumiki doesn’t want her reason to be an obligation, just like her mother’s because you’re my child.

“Because I choose to,” she says quietly, first, and then with conviction: “Yeah. Because I choose to.”

Megumi gives her a look dripping with condescension, as if he was the older one, unamused at her naivete. His eyes, green glints in the moonlight, bore straight through her.

“I’ll make you choose otherwise.”

Megumi turns around and pulls his blanket over his head, and the conversation is over.

---

Tsumiki wakes up when her mother kisses her head. Just the barest press against her temple, but she stirs nonetheless, unaccustomed to the touch. Tsumiki wrestles with the heavy remnants of sleep for a few moments. By the time she manages to open her eyes, she can only see a figure padding out of her room, silhouette barely visible in the pitch-blackness.

Tsumiki sits up. The movement awakens Megumi, who’s clutching her pajama shirt (an adorable habit that Tsumiki will never acknowledge out of fear of him stopping). He makes a half-formed word as he stirs, but Tsumiki presses a finger to his lips.

Her mother sets down two tote bags in the hall. Most of her shoes are still on the rack. She’s wearing one coat and carries another. A hasty packing job. She looks back once at Tsumiki through the open crack of her door. It must be too dark for her to see Tsumiki’s open eyes, because no fear or guilt crosses her face before she turns back to the door.

Tsumiki knows that if she calls out now, her mother will not leave. She will pretend she was just going for an early shift or dropping stuff off for donation, and then she will return home, shoulders heavy with the burden of misfortune. She will continue to trudge through the smear of days and nights that promises no escape. And then, when it becomes unbearable again, she will leave, this time not stopping to kiss Tsumiki goodbye.

Tsumiki watches her leave. The door falls shut. She exhales, and a cool emptiness fills her chest.

Megumi’s hand grasps hers. When she meets his eyes, they are steadfast and inexpressive. This is a desert he has already crossed, alone, and survived. For once she feels younger than him.

He tugs her back to lying down. His hand grasps her shirt again, and the other pats her vaguely on the arm.

“Tomorrow,” he mumbles. “We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

---

The cash drawer yields just short of eighty thousand yen. The couches, side tables, and every pouch and bag in the apartment yield a few thousand more. The calm that settled in Tsumiki’s stomach as she watched her mother leave has evaporated entirely, but her body still moves automatically, feet tapping across the apartment and mouth moving in confident, sharp-edged words.

Tsumiki searches the fridge for something that’s about to expire. She finds some partially moldy strawberries and begins cutting out the bad parts. Megumi sits at the table, expectant. Maybe he thinks she has some sort of plan. But Tsumiki is only cutting strawberries because she has no idea what else she can do.

“Let’s eat,” she says, presenting the mutilated fruit to Megumi with the same smile she’d use for her mother when she came home in the evenings. He takes one, turns it over in his fingers, and says,

“And then what?”

Megumi is sometimes too pragmatic for his own good. “Then, we’ll make one of those money division things. A budget. Then, lunch. After that… ”

Tsumiki trails off. After that, she doesn’t know. They have to make money somehow. This won’t last them more than a few months, at best. But of course no one would hire two primary schoolers. Besides, it’s important for both of them to go to school. No matter which way she looks at it, they are screwed, to put it simply.

“See? It can’t work,” Megumi says. “We should just call the police.”

It speaks to how dire their situation is that Megumi, of all people, is suggesting asking adults for help.

“They’ll separate us.”

“It’s better than dying of starvation,” he says shortly.

“What if we get horrible adults again?”

“Then we’ll do the whole thing again.”

Tsumiki remembers Megumi at the age of four: unspeaking, accepting any touch or gesture without acknowledgement. Completely resigned to any cruelty, immediately dismissive of any kindness. These days, he still doesn’t smile, but he holds Tsumiki’s shirt when they sleep at night. He follows her around when she does the household chores, telling her he’s bored and might as well help. That’s love, that’s all the love she’s ever known, and Tsumiki needs it like oxygen.

Strawberry juice drips down Megumi’s chin. Tsumiki wipes it with her thumb and he grimaces.

“I can’t leave you,” she says quietly.

“You can. It’s easy.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Well, your plan sucks. Our neighbors will figure it out. The school will figure it out. We aren’t kids from one of your little shows who can live in train cars and trees. We’re real orphans.”

Yes, they are real orphans. They have no door that beckons them into a fantasy world, no magic gifts that let them walk their own way through life, firm and steadfast and powerful. The world is this kitchen, this one-bedroom flat at best, encasing them within chipped whitewash and a maze of slowly failing pipes and wires. For children who aren’t gifted with adults who love them, the world is a jail cell with no window.

Megumi’s eyes widen. It’s only then that she registers the hot tears dripping down her face, salt on her tongue. She presses her hands into her eyes and wills everything to stop.

“Tsumiki,” Megumi says from much closer; he’s crossed the table to stand in front of her chair. He tugs her wrist. “I didn’t mean it. Don’t, Tsumiki. Sorry. Don’t cry.”

The tone of his voice is almost pleading, the most afraid she’s ever heard him. Tsumiki reaches for him, and for once he accepts her touch, gingerly returning her hug as she buries her face in his shoulder.

“I can’t leave you,” she repeats.

“I know.” Megumi swallows and mumbles, “I don’t want to be separated either.”

In the end, they decide this: they will ration the money as best as they can. When they have five hundred yen left, they will call the police.

---

Sometime around when Tsumiki’s mother leaves, Megumi starts seeing things.

The first time, it’s a pair of eyes staring at him in the dark. He jumps upright, and the eyes materialize into some sort of gooey monster. He tells himself he is just having a nightmare. He is no stranger to bad dreams, although until this point they have only involved real people rather than creatures like this. But then the gooey monster slides over to Tsumiki, and he can’t help it: he dives on top of her, trying to bat the monster away. She yelps and wakes up.

This should also be when Megumi wakes up, but he doesn’t: they briefly tousle while Tsumiki gets her bearings, and then she fumbles for the light.

“What are you doing?” she mumbles, the closest he’s ever heard her to sounding annoyed.

“Bad… dream,” he finally says.

And because Tsumiki is maybe the nicest person on earth, she doesn’t even scold him. She just opens her arms. It’s not like Megumi can refuse after beating her up in the middle of the night, so he returns her hug. The gooey monster stares at him over her shoulder.

The second time, it’s on the way to school. The third time, at the playground. After the first instance, Megumi never makes the mistake of acknowledging the monsters. He quickly realizes that only he can see them. And since he’s in the active practice of trying to appear like a normal well-adjusted child who is definitely not an orphan, he doesn’t even consider telling anyone else about this. He just watches the monsters.

They don’t seem to do much. They hang out near adults more than kids. Sometimes, they sit on people, and those people always look more tired. They yell a bit more.

Megumi is sure that if he’d been able to see the monsters earlier, there would have been one on Tsumiki’s mom. Maybe even ten. But for now, there’s none on him, and although he has to spend a bit of effort swatting them away, none on Tsumiki. So, like many things, Megumi decides to forget about it.

---

Megumi is really hungry. Well, he’s been constantly hungry for weeks. Tsumiki is boiling rice porridge in the kitchen -- he knows because it’s what they’ve been eating for dinner for weeks. Tomorrow, if he really can’t stand it, he’ll ask Tsumiki to stand in front of a restaurant near closing and look really cute. Tsumiki has warned Megumi that if they do this too much, someone might recognize them and split them apart.

To be honest, sometimes Megumi doesn’t think that option sounds so bad. But the moment he has that thought, he gets a very specific image in his mind. In this image, it is early in the morning, and his father should have been home days ago. Megumi can’t remember his father’s face anymore, but he will never forget the face of this particular girlfriend. He remembers the droplets of spit that landed on his face. He remembers the sting of her palm when he dared to wipe them away. He remembers the emptiness that washed over him. He remembers realizing, with his whole body: she doesn’t care about me at all. No one does. No one ever will. I am okay with that. That’s okay.

Then he looks at Tsumiki, chattering about some vegetables she’d bought at a discount or frowning as she tugs out the knots in her hair, and knows with utter certainty that he would not be okay if they were separated. Not at all. No one cares about him, and no one will, except Tsumiki.

So, here he is, waiting for his rice porridge. His stomach grumbles and kind of hurts, so he distracts himself like he always does at this time of day, when the sun casts long shadows on the wall: shadow puppets. Megumi can’t remember his father’s face anymore, but he remembers the feel of his rough palms shaping Megumi’s hands. He copies the motion now-- wondering, against his will, if the act brings him closer to the feeling of those hands on his. The sound of his father’s belly laugh shaking inside his chest. Megumi hates his father, but if he would just come back --

There are two dogs staring back at him. Megumi scrambles backwards on the couch. Tsumiki, catching the movement from the other corner of their tiny apartment, looks up.

“Is everything alright?” She scans the apartment, her gaze passing right through the two dogs. The alertness on her face softens. “You okay there, Megumi?”

She can’t see them, he realizes. But they look so different from the creepy things he tries to keep out of the apartment. These dogs look very real.

“I’m fine,” he manages. “Thought I saw a rat.”

The concern reappears on Tsumiki’s face. “That would be terrible. I should seal all the food.” And then she’s gone, back to inspecting the porridge on the stove.

Megumi stares at the dogs. They stare back. The white one turns its head so that Megumi sees its profile. Then he understands. He folds his hands, and sure enough, the shadow that flickers on the wall aligns perfectly with the dog’s profile.

The dogs come from the shadow puppets. The shadow puppets came from --

“Megumi, time to eat!” Tsumiki’s voice cuts through the room.

“Okay,” he calls back.

The dogs come from the shadow puppets. The shadow puppets came from his father. And Megumi hates his father.

“Go away,” he whispers, and they do.

---

Four months later, the money trickles away.

It’s been four months of scavenging food out of dumpsters after dark and buying everything from the thrift store in the next town, because they are afraid of any of their classmates’ mothers seeing them and asking the wrong questions. Today, just like any other day, Tsumiki splashes her face with water at 6 a.m. and stares at herself in the mirror. She knows she does not look how a seven-year-old should look. The dark shadows that cut like bruises under her eyes are not normal. The hollows under her cheekbones are not normal. She looks old, tired.

Tsumiki enters the kitchen. For once, Megumi is awake before her. He’s counting out the savings.

“It’s below five hundred,” he says, not looking at her.

“I see.”

The silence stretches endlessly. Tsumiki starts washing rice, wishing it were fruit, like the strawberries they ate when they first woke up alone.

“Tsumiki. Can we wait a little longer?”

Tsumiki’s heart is so full. She loves Megumi more than she has ever loved anything. Yet, when she cries, when the easy tears spill into the sink drain, she is not sure whether it is out of relief or despair.

--

On the precipice of the end of everything, Gojo Satoru is cut and pasted into Megumi’s life from another world, like the collages Tsumiki likes to make from her mother’s leftover magazines. He is glittering and reflective in the sunset, from his eyes to his smile to his hair, perfectly polished against the grubby backdrop of their doorstep. Megumi has the sensation that if he reached out to grab him, he would be two-dimensional, some sort of shimmering illusion. Or maybe it’s the hunger talking.

Gojo Satoru talks a lot, but there are only a few things he says that have substance. One, the word jujutsu, the label for the things he sees and the things he can create. This shiny cut-and-paste man candidly affirms for Megumi that he has not become delusional from malnutrition, that this abnormality is in fact power. Two, power. Megumi’s father sold him to his family for power. Megumi has some sort of value, if he can only figure out how to extract it.

Three, a choice. One on hand, there is his father’s family, that will supposedly feed and house him because of his power. On the other, a hazy unknown -- perhaps a life under this Gojo Satoru character, perhaps a continuation of their quiet, lonely existence.

If I go there, will Tsumiki be happy?

Absolutely not.

Tsumiki leans out over the balcony, beckoning him inside. No decision could ever be easier.

Gojo Satoru tells him he’ll have to work hard, that he shouldn’t get left behind. So be it. Megumi will work hard; he’ll do whatever it takes. He’d rather their safety come at a price, in fact, because that way it’s easier to believe.

---

On the precipice of the end of everything, Tsumiki sees Megumi talking to a strange guy with white hair. The strange guy reappears a few days later with a lot of papers, and announces that he’s here to fix everything.

As it turns out, in a fantastically unbelievable series of events, Megumi and Tsumiki are not real orphans. They are fictional orphans, and Megumi is the brave protagonist of this fantasy. It turns out that the odd way his shadow sometimes stretches out when he’s upset and the way he often tugs Tsumiki as they walk to school as if she’s about to bump into something invisible were the first inklings of a magical gift, a door left ajar to another world. This door takes the form of one Gojo Satoru, who lifts them out of the cage of their slowly-crumbling one-bedroom flat and deposits them firmly in the world of the sorcerer.

Well, not quite. He deposits them firmly in a new apartment in east Saitama, spitting distance from his high school in the Tokyo suburbs, because he is still in high school. Gojo Satoru is not the wise mentor of magical archetypes. He doesn’t wear robes or cast spells. He moves through life with energy and forcefulness, kicking down doors and canceling contracts and generally bulldozing his way through everything that doesn’t suit him.

The first thing Tsumiki learns about the jujutsu world is that power is the ultimate law. Gojo Satoru has power, and he uses it to keep them from Megumi’s family for some reason that they both are keeping secret from her, much as they try to pretend otherwise. And Megumi has power, or at least he has it blooming inside him. That is why Gojo Satoru found them, in order to teach Megumi to become like him. Gojo Satoru saves them both, Megumi because he’s valuable, and Tsumiki because she’s there. One more set of schooling, living expenses, and medical benefits get thrown into the contract with the mysterious sorcery school, just because Gojo Satoru asks for it. And he only asks for it because Megumi demands it.

The second thing that Tsumiki learns about the jujutsu world is that she doesn’t belong in it. She wasn’t created to belong in it. She can’t see curses nor Megumi’s shadow pets, which he’s apparently had for months and never told her about. The only proof she has that sorcery even exists is the way her hand presses up against Gojo-san’s, unable to make contact, until the space between them collapses and her palm is enveloped in his warm, rough fingers. He grins at her, all teeth, and tells her about convergent and divergent series. She doesn’t understand a word, because it’s high-school math (an equal and opposite unknown realm to jujutsu sorcery).

The jujutsu world was built to keep people like Tsumiki out of it. Yet she slips in unnoticed, hiding in Megumi’s shadow. Now they live on the line between realms. They go to school in the morning in school uniforms paid for nameless sorcerers. A nervous, sweaty boy a few years younger than Gojo-san drops by with a wad of cash every month. And Gojo-san himself appears on his whim and fancy, swooping away with Megumi to do some sorcery training after depositing a skull-crushing pat on Tsumiki’s head.

When they return, Megumi wide-eyed and flushed with wonder despite his best efforts to remain poker-faced, Gojo-san takes them all out to eat and jabbers at Tsumiki about the mission they’d gone on. Then, remembering himself, he stops to ask about her life. How’s school? Does she have friends? He asks vague, packaged questions, because he understands as little about a normal life as she does about the life of a sorcerer.

Tsumiki, for all the undeserving luck she’s received, is sure to do what’s asked of her, and then some. She answers all his questions in proper complete sentences. She keeps the apartment spick and span, just like when she was three, four, five years old and waiting for her mother to come home from work. Except now, she doesn’t wish for anyone to kiss her and thank her for her hard work. She doesn’t wish for anyone to braid her hair so that it falls in waves the next morning. She doesn’t want anything at all, because what she has right now is more than enough.

“Come on, won’t you pick something? Just pick what you want,” Gojo-san tells her, a bite of frustration to his voice, when it’s her turn to choose a restaurant and she tells him mildly that anything would be fine.

So it’s part of her obligation, then, to want things. Gojo-san wants her to want things, because he’s smart enough to understand how Tsumiki feels and because he’s kind enough to try and fix her. So she thinks about the food that Megumi wants, and the things she’s seen Gojo-san enjoy eating, and thinks of an appropriate restaurant to satisfy them both.

---

Gojo-sensei is, against all odds, a pretty good teacher.

To be clear, he is absolute dog shit at the act of teaching. He has one tactic and one tactic alone to teach any technique, jujutsu or physical: demonstrating once, and then tossing Megumi into the line of fire until he figures it out himself. It’s inefficient and frustrating. Megumi fails and fails, Gojo-sensei laughing the whole time as if the incompetence of his own student is the funniest thing in the world, until he finally doesn’t. Gojo-sensei is never too impressed when Megumi succeeds, no matter how fast he manages to figure out an attack, usually just depositing a good-natured slap on his back before moving on to the next technique.

In summary, he’s bad at explanation and worse at meaningful encouragement. Yet he’s in his element when he’s using his powers, and somehow more approachable. He doesn’t have that strange plastic coating to his voice that he gets when he checks in on Megumi and Tsumiki’s health and grades and whether they have friends (Tsumiki does, Megumi doesn’t) -- the things that make him uncomfortable because he doesn’t understand them. He’s keen and insightful, often dropping to a crouch and telling Megumi in a quiet lilt, like a particularly juicy secret, exactly what’s wrong with his body and mind.

Megumi always leaves their quasi-weekly sessions exhausted and irritated but oddly refreshed, calm even. He remembers that even within the iron grip that nameless sorcerer adults and useless sorcerer rules have on the course of his life, there are some small ripples he can still control. Gojo-sensei reminds him of this, often enough that Megumi suspects that it must have some personal importance to him:

“I know grown-ups are super annoying. It sucks that they meddle and make all your choices for you just ‘cause of your technique. Believe me, I’ve been there. And I know I kind of count as one of those grown-ups for you, but”-- his voice drops, losing all hint of brazenness, so threadbare that Megumi actually has to strain to listen -- “a strong jujutsu sorcerer has an unshakeable sense of self. So decide what you want to stand by, and don’t let anyone stop you, least of all me. Got it?”

Megumi stares up into Gojo-sensei’s eyes, those inscrutable fragments of early-spring sky, steadfast and unforgiving and frozen over. Gojo-sensei’s sense of self is certainly unshakeable. It’s so overwhelming that it bends the universe around him. But as long as Megumi can stay with Tsumiki, as long as this tentative peace they’ve carved out of their lives remains mostly intact, Megumi will dutifully keep his head down and do what’s asked of him. He doesn’t want to bend the universe at all.

“Okay, kiddo. How about dinner? Text Tsumiki and ask her where she wants to go.” Gojo-sensei secures his blindfold back on, and that lightness creeps back into his voice. He starts pretending again. “Did you hear me? Or are you just being mulish again?”

“I don’t have a cell phone,” Megumi tells him.

“Oh! Right. I should do that. Remind me later and I’ll buy you both phones, okay?” Megumi doesn’t have time to protest before Gojo-sensei’s moved on, phone against his ear. “Hey, Tsumiki. Dinner. Pick a place. We’ll pick you up in, hm, half a minute! See ya.”

Gojo-sensei extends a hand. “Come on, warp time. You know the drill.”

Megumi touches him as barely as possible, wrapping his hand around Gojo-sensei’s thumb. He hates touching Gojo-sensei, hates holding his hand, because it reminds him of a hand he doesn’t want to remember. It wakes up something fearful and hungry in his chest, an open-mawed monster that wants and wants and doesn’t know how to keep quiet, that refuses to realize that life is singularly disappointing despite the immense evidence of that fact.

Gojo-sensei is a pretty good teacher. If Gojo-sensei is his teacher and his teacher alone, then he’s not disappointing at all. But if Megumi wants him to be anything more, then he is setting himself up to be failed. Gojo-sensei is contractually obligated to be Megumi’s teacher and he has no reason to step over that line. Even when he does -- like now, like this good-natured charade of dinner and chitchat -- he can just as easily step back, decide he doesn’t want it anymore, and Megumi would have no grounds on which to argue.

As soon as they materialize at the apartment, Megumi wrenches his hand out of Gojo-sensei’s grip. He doesn’t speak to Gojo-sensei for the rest of the evening, ignoring the uncharacteristic droop to his plastic-wrap stretchy smile. He argues fiercely with the monster in his chest, forcing it to sleep, wishing for it to die.

Megumi refuses to want. He’s done hinging his heart on the whims of careless adults.

---

If Tsumiki’s deductive reasoning is correct, part of the reason why Gojo-san looks after them is because he likes to have fun.

She doesn’t think he’s ever done any of the hard parts of caretaking. Megumi constantly gets into fights at school for no good reason and Gojo-san just laughs it off. During his rare visits he never helps out around the house, only ever sparing Tsumiki the act of preparing dinner by sometimes taking them out to eat. And when Megumi fell sick in January, Gojo-san packed him up and sent him to a doctor for three days even though it was just a bad cold. Tsumiki had worried herself sick as well -- it was the longest time they’d spent apart, and she kind of thought Megumi was going to die -- and was subsequently subject to the same treatment. She liked the doctor, who was smart and carefree, and used the opportunity to ask when Gojo-san’s birthday was.

“December 7th, so you missed your chance this year,” she said, after a brief pause. “Do me a favor and try to prank him next year.”

Anyway, all told, Tsumiki thinks Gojo-san looks after them because the fun parts of it are fun. He lavishes Megumi and Tsumiki with cake and presents on their birthdays, takes them out to amusement parks and arcades when he’s investigating hauntings there, and buys them video game sets so that he can trounce them at Mario Kart.

Luckily, Tsumiki is very good at solving problems by herself, so Gojo-san picked the right kids to take under his wing. And Tsumiki likes having fun, unlike Megumi. So things are good. Thanks to Gojo-san, she has cute clothes for all forms of weather. She’s eaten delicacies across Tokyo. She’s peered at the vast, vast world from the highest point on the highest rollercoaster at Fuji-Q.

And when all of that is over, she’s perfectly happy to do the mundane things alone: like now, when she is brushing her hair in the living room, comforted by the sound of Megumi rooting around in the cabinets for a snack. It’s getting long, but now that they have the money for real hair care she can’t bring herself to cut it. She tugs through the knots one by one, twisting her arm to reach the tricky ones in the back.

“Wow, Tsumiki’s hair is so pretty!” Gojo-san coos. He’s appeared in front of her in the living room with no warning or reason, as always. “It’s tough to brush it yourself, though. Here, I’ve got it.”

“I’m okay,” Tsumiki says around the bobby pin in her mouth. “Thank you.”

“No, I’m actually really good at this. I used to -- trust me, I’m good at it. Like I’m good at everything.”

“I do it for myself all the time,” Tsumiki says, and for some horrifying reason, she has a lump in throat. She wants, she wants, she wants -- “Really, it’s okay.”

But Gojo-san swipes the pin from her mouth and the brush from her hands. His first pull catches in her hair and she yelps.

“Sorry, don’t know my own strength,” he chirps, and then probably makes Tsumiki half-bald with the next brush. But once that torment is over, she finds that he is really good at braiding her hair, weaving effortlessly through Tsumiki’s hair as he chatters aimlessly:

“I think long hair is a pain, but if someone else goes through the trouble of having it, then I can reap the benefits, like doing pretty braids! Shoko -- that’s Ieiri-sensei who took care of you when you were sick -- always kept her hair short when she was a kid, and now she’s old and balding -- kidding, she just murders me if I try to touch her. Look, all done already! Do you like it?”

Tsumiki cranes her neck to see the back of her head in the balcony window. Gojo-san’s side is far better than hers. He must realize this, but doesn’t move to redo her half, only tugging gently at both pigtails.

“What’s up?” Gojo-san says, perpetual smile fading, and only then does Tsumiki realize that she’s not supposed to be this quiet. She wants, she doesn’t want. She doesn’t miss her mother and the braids she never wove into her hair. She’s not going to cry.

Tsumiki smiles broadly. She presses her chest into a ball.

“It’s beautiful. Thank you so much!”

Gojo-san stands up and his wallet falls from his jacket pocket, but before Tsumiki can tell him, he’s wandered over to the kitchen to ask Megumi to shadow a mission. Although it’s late and they have school the next day, Megumi shrugs and agrees, an acquiescence he’s been making more often these days.

“Gojo-san,” she says as they get ready to leave. “You dropped this.”

She hands him his wallet. Gojo-san’s mind is already on the next task and he absent-mindedly thanks her before vaguely pronouncing that he’ll see her soon. If he realizes that things are slightly in the wrong order, he doesn’t show it.

Tsumiki learned from her moment of snooping where Gojo-san learned to braid hair: from the long-haired teenager in the photo in his wallet. And if not him, then the middle-school girl or the proper-looking woman at her side. Behind this odd assortment of people Gojo-san has never before mentioned, he keeps one square of the photo-booth strip that the three of them took together at Fuji-Q.

Gojo-san visits Megumi and Tsumiki just because he wants to have fun, Tsumiki has always thought. That’s why he only shows up for celebrations and never for serious occasions. But this logic fails to account for the photos in his wallet, because those are sentimental and not really fun in their own right.

This logic fails to account for the fact that on December 7th, Tsumiki gears up with a cake and a prank candle that never extinguishes, only for him to never arrive. The following day, he swings by to take Megumi on a mission somewhere up north, and doesn’t stop for long enough for Tsumiki to launch into action. Either he doesn’t find his own birthday fun, or Tsumiki’s logic is wrong. Tsumiki uses the prank candle on Megumi’s birthday three weeks later, which Gojo-san shows up to celebrate with great pomp and circumstance.

So Tsumiki’s deductive reasoning is somewhere between partly and mostly wrong. Gojo-san likes having fun, but that’s not everything. Gojo-san is taking care of them in this haphazard and incomplete way perhaps because it’s just the best way he knows how to do it.

---

“You’re not cold, are you?” says Gojo-sensei.

Megumi shakes his head, focusing on stepping in the deep imprints Gojo-sensei’s feet have made in the fresh snow so that he can move quickly enough to keep up. It would be impossible to be cold in the frankly ridiculous amount of layers he’s bundled in. The last time Gojo-sensei took him out on a mission in the winter, Megumi had shown up in his school uniform because no one had ever bought Megumi a winter jacket. He shivered his way through the mission and promptly fell sick afterwards. Gojo-sensei didn’t waste a moment trying to take care of him; he deposited Megumi in the care of a doctor who smelled like cigarettes and told Megumi she was beyond such feeble ailments when he informed her that smoking caused lung cancer. After Megumi’s cold subsided, Gojo-sensei appeared in their apartment with head-to-foot outdoor gear for not only Megumi but Tsumiki. Megumi should start scheming to shadow missions during every weather condition so that Gojo-sensei buys them all the expensive clothes they’re missing.

It’s not often that Gojo-sensei takes Megumi on missions. It’s usually when the task is straightforward enough that Megumi wouldn’t be a burden, or when there’s a learning experience to be had. Gojo-sensei hasn’t revealed what the task is for today, but Megumi can sense the inklings of cursed energy wafting towards them. He doesn’t even realize Gojo-sensei has fallen back to let him lead the way until he finds himself wading through powder snow, forced to make fresh tracks instead of hopping between Gojo-sensei’s. He turns back and finds Gojo-sensei grinning at him.

“Good instincts,” he says.

He’s in a good mood today. Maybe he likes the winter. Megumi can sympathize. Winter is quiet and cool, and there are fewer of the monsters he has in the last year come to reconcile are cursed spirits: a real and killable entity, not a figment of his tormented imagination. In a few weeks, Megumi will turn eight. Last year, Gojo-sensei appeared with a cake to celebrate; apparently Tsumiki told him. He hadn’t had the heart to tell Gojo-sensei he didn’t particularly like sweets. He just ate quietly, trying to tell himself that this meant nothing, that this was just another whim. He doesn’t expect Gojo-sensei to show up this year.

Megumi realizes that he doesn’t know when Gojo-sensei’s birthday is. It’s been almost a year and they haven’t celebrated it. Megumi figures that Gojo-sensei probably has plenty of his sorcerer friends to celebrate for him. Still, he toys with the thought of asking until they reach the source of the cursed energy: an abandoned warehouse, remote enough to evade scrutiny from the nearest town.

“Oh my.” Gojo-sensei squints at the warehouse and takes off his glasses. “Oh, okay. This is kind of dark. Are you going to be traumatized if you see some kidnapped children?”

Megumi really does not think he is equipped to answer that question. Still, he shakes his head, because that’s the convenient answer.

“Basically, there’s a special-grade in there who’s holding some -- four? yes, four -- kids captive. Doesn’t look great, but they’re alive. Let’s get them out first before I handle the curse. Oh!” Gojo-sensei claps his hands. “That’s a perfect job for you! Use your little doggies and lead them out, ‘kay?”

And how exactly am I supposed to do that? Megumi wants to say, but he knows Gojo-sensei will just smile irritatingly at him and maybe titter irritatingly to boot. He clasps his hands and summons the Divine Dogs. Specific instructions, Gojo-sensei’s voice says in his head, clear and direct commands.

“There are four children inside that warehouse,” he says, still feeling stupid for talking in full sentences to a pair of dogs, but they sit attentively and listen. “Each of you find two and lead them out. One at a time without the curse inside knowing.” Gojo-sensei raises his eyebrows; there’s something Megumi’s missing. “Leave no trace. Footprints or cursed energy.”

The dogs scamper off. Megumi tracks the number of times they enter and exit: one, two, three children freed. The black dog emerges, but the white dog doesn’t. Then the curse rears to life, flooding their senses with malevolent energy. It must have realized its victims were disappearing. Gojo-sensei swears under his breath.

“Stay here,” he says, but before he can teleport to the scene, Megumi catches his sleeve.

“Wait. I’ll distract it instead.”

Gojo-sensei doesn’t question him, just nods. Both the white dog and the last child will be in danger if Gojo-sensei fights the curse in their vicinity, but their chance of death is almost certain if Megumi doesn’t succeed in distracting the curse. In this equation, though, there is one more factor: Megumi doesn’t want to fail in front of Gojo-sensei. His job was to get the children out, and he will do exactly that.

Megumi summons the rabbits, which he tamed just weeks ago. The effort of having two Shadows out at once is slightly dizzying, but he steadies himself and directs the rabbits to flood towards the curse. Gojo-sensei watches him critically. And then -- yes -- the curse shifts its attention to the rabbits. He pushes them forward, although he knows they will not survive a single strike from this curse, and holds. Patience. Focus. A second, an eternity. The curse readies its strike.

“They’re out,” Gojo-sensei mutters, but Megumi already knew that; he sensed the white dog leaving the warehouse. He swipes his hand and the rabbits disappear. The curse roars. The air around him crackles, and then he is sinking into the snow somewhere far enough away that he can’t sense anything anymore. Gojo-sensei must have teleported him out of range and gone to finish the job himself. Megumi waits, hiking the hood of his jacket over his ears, until he returns. He doesn’t much like waiting, but with Gojo-sensei, he knows it’ll never be long.

Sure enough, it’s not even five minutes before Gojo-sensei reappears, his cheeks rosy from the cold and exhilaration.

“That one was actually pretty strong,” he says happily, though he doesn’t look like he struggled at all. He crouches down to Megumi. “And I could only go all-out because someone did such a good job getting the kids out.”

That’s just not true -- Gojo-sensei probably had ten different ways of neutralizing the situation up his sleeve -- but Megumi will take it. He shuffles to his feet and they trek back to the scene together to observe the aftermath.

Gojo-sensei and Megumi watch from a distance as the fourth child is rescued by police, summoned by their anonymous tip. They won’t get any closer in order to avoid being recorded as witnesses or suspects. As Megumi’s dog trots back to his side, her eyes sweep backwards, following its path. They make eye contact for a brief moment. They’re just far enough apart that Megumi can’t discern her features, but something about her stick-thin, hollow appearance is unsettlingly familiar. It’s not the physical evidence of malnutrition (though he’s been there, too). It’s the way her eyes stare right through him, unseeing, schooled into hopelessness by the harsh hand of luck. An empty heart. A hungry heart, always wanting, no matter how much it is denied.

He ducks his head and buries his chin in his dog’s fur, telling himself that he’s rewarding its good behavior instead of hiding from the girl.

“She might fall for you,” says Gojo-sensei, tickled by the whole interaction, and when Megumi doesn’t respond he scrubs roughly at his head. “Hey, don’t ignore me.”

As always, his touch is jarring, uncomfortable, and impossibly comforting. Megumi hates everything about it.

Gojo-sensei hums and chatters as they leave the scene, obviously happy that he’d gotten to show off and put Megumi in action. Megumi tunes him out, too busy trying to erase the silhouette of that girl from his head. It’s irrational for him to assign personal significance to a job just because it reminds him of -- what, exactly? Nothing. It doesn’t even remind him of anything.

“Megumi,” Gojo-sensei coos, “if you’re going to tune me out you have to tell me what’s so interesting inside your own head.”

It’s just another tactic to rib Megumi, because it faces Megumi with the impossible decision of listening to Gojo-sensei or speaking to him of his own will. But Megumi, for once, takes the plunge.

“Who’s going to come for her?” Gojo-sensei’s eyebrows raise above his glasses, maybe out of shock that Megumi actually opened his mouth. “The police took her. But then what?”

“There are many loving families out there. Don’t worry your little head about it.”

“She looked at me like --” Megumi swallows. She looked at him like she wanted everything about him, like he was the lucky one, the blessed child. And she wasn’t wrong. He walks safely in front of Gojo-sensei, shielded from the cold by the jacket he bought and protected from any other danger by the power in one fraction of his fingertip. But it’s fake, it’s all fake. Without the Ten Shadows, he would be meeting that girl’s starving face with equal measure.

“I wonder if they’ll separate her from the other children,” he finally says, although that’s the barest approximation of what he means. “They don’t try to keep family together if they’re not related by blood.”

“Is that why you and Tsumiki toughed it out alone?” Megumi nods stiffly; even now, the admission is difficult. “Well, good for me. It would’ve been more of a headache to recruit you if you had foster parents sticking their noses in your business.”

“Probably wouldn’t have happened. No one would have taken me,” Megumi says, against his better judgment.

Gojo-sensei doesn’t seem concerned by the admission, only considering the thought with a tilt of his head. “And why is that?”

“I’m unpleasant. Difficult. Unsettling.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. They told me,” Megumi adds, because he’s already in too deep, “the women. All of them. Tsumiki’s mom too.”

“I see. Fair enough. The evidence is stacked against you.”

Gojo-sensei doesn’t tell Megumi anything to the contrary, which Megumi wasn’t expecting, anyway. He knows he’s intolerable. Anyone who has a problem with that can eat shit. The unfair rule of the world is that no matter how capable they are, children require caretaking. The kicker is that children have to be lovable to be taken care of. Luckily, Gojo-sensei has a different and much more practical reason to take care of him, a reason that doesn’t require Megumi to play-act normalcy. Without the Ten Shadows, Megumi is worth nothing, but he does have the Ten Shadows.

“I hope she’s lovable,” Megumi says.

“Who?”

“The girl. I hope she’s got a good smile. Like Tsumiki.”

“So that adults pick her?” Megumi nods. “You think the adults would pick Tsumiki?”

“Tsumiki would have been fine. It would have been so easy for her.”

“But she toughed it out with you instead.”

Megumi weighs his words. It’s so rare that there is something he actually wants to say, and that Gojo-sensei is actually listening to him, that he finds himself oddly frightened by the sudden opportunity. So he says nothing.

“So d’you think you’re unlovable, then?” Gojo-sensei cocks an eyebrow at Megumi. “Hm?”

“That’s a horrible question to ask a kid.”

“Too bad I don’t know any better,” Gojo-sensei says blithely.

“Anyway, I already answered.”

“Nah, you said you’re unpleasant, difficult, and unsettling. That’s different.”

“What’s the difference?”

“There’s a difference.” Gojo-sensei shrugs. “I don’t feel like explaining. Consider it another lesson.”

“It’s not a lesson if you don’t tell me the answer.”

“The learning is in the journey, my dear Megumi.” Gojo-sensei reaches for Megumi’s head and he ducks away. Gojo-sensei doesn’t insist on ruffling his hair for once, just tucks his hands into his pockets. “So? What do you think?”

Megumi could ignore Gojo-sensei. He should. But he doesn’t.

“Yes,” he says, “I am.”

He risks a glance at Gojo-sensei. The only indication that he’s even heard Megumi is a brief, jerky nod. And Megumi is suddenly angry, so angry that he wants to scream at Gojo-sensei and hammer him with punches that will never land. He wants to rip those stupid glasses off his face and shout, look at me, for once won’t you just look at me?

But instead, he says, “What about you?”

Gojo-sensei barely reacts. Half his mouth turns up in a wry smile. “Students aren’t supposed to quiz their teachers.”

“Be like that, then. Dodge. Like a weakling,” Megumi attempts to goad him.

But Gojo-sensei only laughs, that airy, self-assured sound that has always sounded sort of empty to Megumi.

“You’ll have to do a bit better than that to get me to crack, kiddo.” Gojo-sensei goes for the head pat now, scrubbing Megumi’s scalp so vigorously that he stumbles. “Unpleasant, whatever. But you sure are fun.”

“That is one adjective I have never been called.”

“Well, you are. Super fun. That’s why you’re my sidekick!”

“You don’t recruit students based on competence?”

“Nope, only entertainment value.”

They’ve reached the train station, which they’ll take down to Tokyo, from where Gojo-sensei can teleport them both home. Gojo-sensei deposits himself on one of the benches on the platform with a sigh.

“Man, I am way too important to be taking public transit. As soon as that kid Ijichi gets his license we’ll be driving around everywhere, you’ll see.”

Megumi, for one, sort of enjoys the train rides. The seats are wide, he can read and walk around, and he can sleep comfortably. For a short few hours the world is still. Even Gojo-sensei often gets quiet, tapping out case reports or flipping idly through his phone.

Today is no different. When the train pulls into the station Gojo-sensei hops aboard without looking back, completely forgetting that Megumi is too small to step onto the platform without help. He crawls onto the train on his hands and knees and scrambles after Gojo-sensei. They sit at the back of the car and Gojo-sensei insists on the window seat because Megumi always falls asleep anyway, even though the window seat is more comfortable to sleep in. Megumi tries to arrange his jacket over him like a blanket but it’s too bulky and keeps sliding off, so he settles for shivering slightly as the train pulls away.

“Here,” says Gojo-sensei quietly. “Trade?”

Megumi opens his eyes to find Gojo-sensei replacing Megumi’s jacket with his school uniform jacket, tucking it firmly around Megumi’s shoulders. It’s precisely warm enough. He’s so close that Megumi can finally see past his glasses to his alien-like eyes. They crinkle at the edges when he smiles, just like a normal person’s eyes do.

“Sweet dreams,” he says, and then chuckles, as if he made a little private joke.

Today is no different than any other mission. Megumi falls asleep, and when they reach Tokyo, Gojo-sensei carries Megumi in his arms. Megumi is not like other children. He doesn’t need to be taken care of. All the same, in moments like these, Megumi is too tired to fight it.

Megumi doesn’t fight it, and just like always, neither of them will acknowledge his weakness tomorrow.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

II. IMAGINATION/VALUE

Megumi is twelve years old and he has a pretty good idea of how the world should work. He’s seen the life cycle of enough curses to decide for himself. If everyone kept to themselves and stayed inside their lines, there would be no conflicts and no annoyances in Megumi’s life. There is no miscommunication if there’s no communication, after all.

Yet there are so-called bad people who feel like asserting authority out of their vapid arrogance, and so Megumi squashes that arrogance. His methods are much kinder than showing them a first-grade curse, anyway. But despite that kindness, there are so-called good people that believe that everyone should be forgiven. They sit him down in disciplinary meetings and tell him that violence is not the answer. If Megumi has learned anything, it’s that violence really is often the answer. He doesn’t say this, though, because there will be no miscommunication if he doesn’t communicate at all.

The only person this doesn’t fly with is Tsumiki, who has learned to talk at him no matter the extent of his stonewalled silence. Tsumiki’s goodness is in all likelihood a persona she learned from playing diplomat for her mom, yet she acts like pure kindness is her whole thing. She acts like his guardian even though Gojo-sensei, who is actually their guardian, doesn’t give two shits about who Megumi beats up or why.

“Megumi, I get that your unforgiving side is part of your kindness. It’s your way of enacting fairness. But this is going too far,” she tells him after he’s suspended for a week for stringing up a row of delinquents on the school flagpole.

“You say that, yet here you are interfering in my lack of forgiveness towards idiots.”

“I just don’t want you to get expelled.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“You still need to get a middle-school diploma to go to high school, sorcery or not!”

“Fine, I’ll scrape through a disciplinary school once I get expelled. Happy?”

“No, I’m not. Megumi, you’re intelligent and hardworking. There’s just no reason for you to fail school out of some strange desire to self-sabotage. Is this your way of asking for attention? Should I ignore your disciplinary calls until Gojo-san finally comes to handle it?”

“I actually want exactly no attention at all,” he snaps, “least of all from you.”

Here’s the thing about Tsumiki: she’s older than him, and at some point in (a large part of) his childhood he depended on her for survival. Because of this, she now thinks she gets to control his actions according to what she believes is right. She wants to follow him into every corner of his life and boss him around as if the world is still the size of their Saitama kitchen.

Here’s another thing about Tsumiki: at five years old, Megumi started seeing curses, and Tsumiki didn’t. Megumi spends his summer Saturdays chasing down the byproducts of the things that make people bad: jealousy, greed, and inferiority. And he spends an equal number of Saturdays chasing down the byproducts of the things that make people good: suppressed resentment, self-sacrifice, love. Emotions generate curses, and there is no distinction between what makes a curse good or bad. In the end, it’s people like Megumi who hunt them down all the same.

Here’s the last thing about Tsumiki: Megumi made the decision to become a sorcerer for her sake, and he still hasn’t told her, and he still doesn’t regret it. He never will. If he regrets anything, it’s bringing her so close to the veil between these two worlds, where in one she can live in blind safety and in the other she may glimpse the violence that Megumi chose to bear for her sake. Megumi will execute the role he set out to play without complaint and without hesitation. In exchange, he wishes Tsumiki would just stay in her fucking lane.

--

Megumi and Gojo-san are going to the Gojo family home to learn about something called a “mahoraga.” It’s the only one of Megumi’s shadow-puppet animals that neither he nor Gojo-san know anything about, and they don’t want to ask Megumi’s family because it might start rumors of a war. “Mahoraga” is such a big deal, a shadow puppet that could start a war. And it may, eventually, move at the command of her little brother’s two hands.

In reality, from what Tsumiki can gather, Megumi is quite far from starting wars. She’s only familiar with the shadows that sound like they’d be pretty cute pets: two dogs, a horde of rabbits, an owl, a toad. There’s a snake he added to his arsenal recently. That leaves five more for him to master. She wonders who he’ll be by then, and she wonders how much of him she will still be able to understand.

So be it, then. Tsumiki eats her toast and quietly observes Megumi and Gojo-sensei discussing logistics for their little trip. She has plenty to do on her own this weekend. Namely, her entrance exams are fast approaching, and she needs to study. She needs to get into a top high school in Tokyo. That way, she can stay close to Megumi when he attends Gojo-san’s sorcerer high school. But aside from that, if Tsumiki goes to a top high school, she will have the resources she needs to get into a top university. If she goes to a top university, she can get a high-paying job, and she can support herself and Megumi without Megumi’s contractual sorcery.

Tsumiki can’t be sure her life will pan out this way, of course. But the secure step-ladder of academic excellence is something she can follow without doubt. Megumi has sorcery, and she has this much humbler ambition.

“Hey, Tsumiki. You want to come?” Gojo-san startles her out of her daydream.

“What?”

He slouches back in his chair in his Gojo-san way, taking up the maximum amount of surface area possible. “Want to come meet my family?”

“Why?”

“Dunno. You look bored.”

How perceptive of him. “I have to study for my entrance exams.”

“My family will probably be more boring than that,” he concedes. “Well, the offer stands.”

“She said she has to study,” Megumi says.

Tsumiki catches the forced evenness to his words. “There’s something about the Gojo house you don’t want me to see.”

“That’s not true.” Megumi takes his breakfast plate and hers as well, then goes to the sink. “It’s just the traditional sorcerer families. They’re weird.”

“How would you know?” Tsumiki follows him through the kitchen. “You never spent even a weekend with your family.”

“I know enough. I can guess how any of the old families will act towards me.”

“And how they’ll act towards me,” Tsumiki surmises. Megumi says nothing, just washes their dishes with unnecessary vigor.

“Hey, Tsumiki is your big sister. She has the right to decide what she can and can’t handle,” Gojo-sensei calls from the dining table.

“Yeah, I can handle a little bit of condescension.”

More than that, Megumi’s implied that there’s something at the Gojo house he doesn’t want her to see. She doesn’t like his tendency to shield her from things he thinks will hurt her, instead of letting her just look for herself and decide. It’s been in his nature since he was six and keeping his mouth shut about the curses popping up at every corner. Now, he perfunctorily summarizes the missions he shadows when she asks, omitting the gory details to which Gojo-san alludes mischievously. He doesn’t tell her about the fights he gets in at school until the principal calls her out of desperation after failing to summon Gojo-san for weeks. Megumi quietly shuts her out of sorcery, perhaps to protect her, perhaps because he doesn’t think she could understand it. But time creeps towards the day when Megumi will officially become a sorcerer, and then there will be no part of his life that she can access anymore.

Predictably, Megumi is super pissy as they all tumble into Ijichi’s car. Ijichi doesn’t comment on the extra kid in the backseat, opting instead to complain feebly to Gojo-san that chauffeuring him to his family home on a Saturday morning is not part of his job description.

“Yet, here you are,” says Gojo-san dismissively. “Kids, decide what music you want to listen to or you’ll be subject to our dear driver’s terrible podcasts.”

“They’re not terrible,” Ijichi protests. Anyway, given that Megumi and Tsumiki are stonily ignoring each other, they make the three-hour drive to the Gojo house accompanied by a rambling self-help podcast on how best to improve your office productivity.

“Well, that was tortuous,” Gojo-san announces as they approach the estate’s entrance. He’s pulled off his bandages, and his eyes glitter brilliantly in the mid-morning light. “Just let us off here. We’ll be done by eight.”

The guards, dressed traditionally, draw their swords when the car stops; it’s like they’ve intruded into a medieval movie.

“Hey, it’s just me,” Gojo-san calls. “Or are you kids fresh enough that we’ve never met? In that case, let me --” The guards fall to their feet in deep respect. “Oh, I guess they do recognize me.”

Gojo-san waltzes past them. Inside the estate, the same bizarre phenomenon repeats itself. Every person they pass folds instantly in a bow as if Gojo-san had personally knocked them over.

“Stop staring,” mutters Megumi. “Hasn’t he told you about the whole strongest ever thing?”

He certainly had, but to be honest Tsumiki always scaled his grandiose descriptions by his self-absorption. But maybe he was never exaggerating.

“What if he was an impersonator? They didn’t check his identity.”

“They don’t need to. His cursed energy is overwhelming.”

Tsumiki wonders if Megumi’s perception of Gojo-san is colored by this energy, by his immense strength. She has always known Gojo-san was the strongest sorcerer from Gojo-san alone, dubious as any of his other proclamations. This power that supposedly makes him a god is invisible to her, but she can finally see it for herself in the respect he commands. The estate falls silent in a sweeping hush as word spreads at the speed of sound: Gojo Satoru is here.

Gojo-san pauses at one of the bowed figures. “Hey, mom.”

It takes everything Tsumiki has to remain silent and keep her eyes on the ground. She has always imagined that Gojo-san was an orphan, just like them. It’s the only logical explanation for how he ended up as such an overgrown child. But no, Gojo-san has a mother, right in front of them. She raises her head. Her eyes shift to Megumi, to Tsumiki, and then back to her son. She nods. A faint smile appears on Gojo-san’s face. And then they are off again, crossing the threshold into the main courtyard.

Someone at the door of the central building -- a servant, maybe -- offers them sandals in lieu of their sneakers. Their footsteps echo across the wood panels until Gojo-san slides open a screen door. Two old men, heads lowered even before the door opened, stand behind it.

“What’s good, teach?” chirps Gojo-san.

“You’ve returned,” says one of the men, presumably “teach,” gruffly. He begins to raise his head, but Gojo-san wags a finger at him.

“Nuh-uh. I never said you could look me in the eye, did I?” A wicked grin spreads across his face when the teacher lowers his head. “Yeah, that’s better.”

Gojo-san takes Megumi by the shoulder and shoves him in front. “This is Fushiguro Megumi. He needs the book with the Ten Shadows stuff. And don’t say you don’t have it, because I remember having to study it for ages when I was a kid.”

“You wish to give up Gojo clan secrets to a Zen’in? That too, the Ten Shadows user, your ancestral enemy?”

“Hey, he’s your enemy. He’s my student. Also, don’t question me. Just tell me what I want.”

Even for Gojo-san, this level of disdain is extreme. Despite the lightness to his words, the power he commands is unmistakable. The ice-cold look in his eyes is one Tsumiki is glad he has never turned on her.

“The sensitive training materials are kept under lock in the inner library,” the teacher finally relents. “Any of the senior servants will have access.”

“Great, so I don’t even have to hang out with you farts any longer.” Gojo-san sticks out his tongue at them briefly. “Peace out, geezers.”

He swings the screen door shut.

“What the fuck?” Megumi mutters to Tsumiki, presumably forgetting that they’re fighting. Tsumiki doesn’t blame him. This whole situation is weird enough to override whatever bitterness she’d had towards her brother this morning, back when they existed in the normal modern world instead of this feudal fantasy-land.

“Those were my teachers, who trained me until I went to Tokyo Jujutsu Tech,” Gojo-san tells them. “Just like I train you, Megumi, except it was every day, all the time. Also, unlike me, they were very boring and annoying.”

Boring and annoying doesn’t seem to warrant the sadistic pleasure Gojo-san had seemed to take in having them bow and obey him, but Tsumiki isn’t about to question it.

“Why didn’t you go to the high school in Kyoto?” Megumi asks.

“More fun stuff to do in Tokyo,” says Gojo-san, another answer that seems like a half-truth, but before either of them can ask any more questions Gojo-san spots someone around the corner. It’s a woman around Gojo-san’s age, sharing his tall frame and white hair.

“Sayaka, is that you?” At the sound of Gojo-san’s voice, the woman snaps into a bow. “Oh, forget the dumb formalities. How are you?”

She cautiously raises her head. Her eyes are the feature which differs most strikingly from Gojo-san’s; they are a plain, warm brown. “I’m well. It’s good to see you, Satoru-sama.”

“Yeah, good to see you too. I only see the family at the stupid three-clan meetings. And that’s only the weird and boring old people.”

Sayaka nods and remains silent. Unlike Gojo-san’s teachers, she knows not to speak out of turn. But Gojo-san doesn’t seem like he wants to exercise his authority on Sayaka. He pauses as if waiting for her to say something, then continues,

“So these kiddos are Fushiguro Megumi and Tsumiki, if you were wondering.” Gojo-san gestures at them. “Megumi is the Zen’in kid I stole. I wonder what sort of bastardized version of the story made it to the estate. Am I plotting to take down the Zen’in by converting their trump card? Am I just spitting in the face of clan politics because I’m stubborn?”

“I’ve heard both,” Sayaka says with a reluctant smile.

“Well, I’m here with my political opponent to teach him about his technique. Do you know who has access to the inner library?”

“Oh, I do,” Sayaka says. “I can take you right now.”

“Wow, did you get a promotion?”

“I think I got a demotion.” Sayaka’s smile turns up a bit at the corners, turning it subtly mischievous. It makes her look more like Gojo-san. “Being your childhood attendant is probably going to be the peak of my career.”

Megumi and Tsumiki both stare as she turns to lead them further into the building. Sayaka looks the same age as Gojo-san. Even if they share the same ageless skin, as Gojo-san likes to brag, she can’t be more than five years older than him. Sayaka, as a teenager, was waiting on Gojo-san, the god in the body of a child.

“How’re my parents?” Gojo-san asks as they enter what must be the main library, lined floor to ceiling with dusty books. “I saw my mom on my way in here. Kind of almost didn’t recognize her.”

“They’re doing well. Your father was recently named a clan elder.”

“Great, so now he can use my name for even more political strong-arming.”

“You still don’t talk?” Sayaka asks.

“Nah, I don’t talk to anyone except for clan business.” They pause at a door at the back of the library. Sayaka begins turning an ornate metal combination on the door. “Sorry, but you guys are stuck in the past. I’m thinking bigger now.”

“I can see that,” Sayaka says. Her eyes flick to Megumi.

“Haven’t you thought about leaving, Sayaka? I really --”

The door clicks open and Sayaka strides quickly into the inner library. She evidently has been trained not to interrupt Gojo-san, but it’s as clear a dismissal as any.

“What is it that you’re looking for?” Sayaka says, then amends, “that is, if it’s not sensitive, I can help you find it.”

“It might be tough for you to find. Sorcerer stuff,” Gojo-san says, the same kindly dismissive way he brushes over the topic with Tsumiki. “Thanks a lot for your help.”

“Of course. Please, feel free to stay for dinner.”

“I dunno. The kids live in Tokyo, so…”

“I understand.” Sayaka bows her head. “It would mean a lot to us. Especially to the younger children who have never met you. But I understand.”

And she’s gone, the click of her sandals swiftly fading.

Gojo-san turns to Tsumiki and Megumi. “Okay, I’m not really sure how this place is organized, but it should be clear when you find what we’re looking for. Ten Shadows, Zen’in, enemy information, blah blah blah.”

They split up, each taking one of the wall-to-wall shelves. For being in the secret inner library, the titles are somewhat nondescript: Kamo Clan Techniques, Cursed Speech Mitigation, Advanced Sigils. If Tsumiki can be tasked with searching, she doesn’t understand why Sayaka couldn’t either. Or, despite his friendliness, Gojo-san doesn’t even trust his childhood attendant when it comes to his enemy-clan prodigy.

“Here’s one,” says Megumi, holding up Zen’in Clan Techniques. The three of them gather around as Megumi flips through it. Tsumiki can’t understand most of it, but Gojo-san shakes his head after a few pages.

“This is a general overview. The one I remember was specific to the Ten Shadows. Look, there’s only a single page on it here.”

The illustration has a tall, dark-haired man, easy to imagine as an ancient adult version of Megumi, with a zoo of animals flocking him. Each animal is annotated with a brief description of its powers. She sees the ones Megumi has mentioned -- the dogs, the rabbits, the toad, the serpent.

“Is that what they actually look like?” she asks Megumi.

“My manifestations are a bit different,” he says. “But roughly, yeah.”

“I wish I could see yours.”

“One day I’ll have you witness a murder,” says Gojo-san. “Then you can probably pet Megumi’s dogs.”

“That’s not funny,” Megumi snaps, and goes back to searching his shelf. Tsumiki takes the cue and retreats as well.

In the end, Tsumiki is the one that finds the book: Details and Strategies for the Zen’in Ten Shadows. She flips through it; there’s a chapter for every Shadow that enumerates their attacks, defenses, and weaknesses. A paragraph catches her eye at the beginning of the rabbit chapter: Among inherited techniques, the Ten Shadows is uniquely malleable to the user. A creative, inspired user utilizes objectively weak Shadows such as the rabbit horde with dexterity, while a naive user neglects its potential. In this sense, preparing for battle against the Ten Shadows requires not just deep knowledge about the technique but also an understanding of how the user may think to manipulate it. So, in short, the person best suited to defeat Megumi is probably Gojo-san himself.

“I found it,” she announces, and releases the book to Gojo-san and Megumi. They immediately start poring over it and writing stuff down. To pass the time, Tsumiki wanders around the library, looking for something interesting, maybe some science or philosophy. But the Gojo secrets seem largely limited to taking down other sorcerers.

The far wall at the back of the room has shelves filled with spiral-bound notebooks, an odd twenty-first century relic among ancient scrolls. She opens them to find what she recognizes as Gojo-san’s slanted hand, though a little bigger and messier. Sure enough, the pages are dated from the early 2000s; Gojo-san would have been around her age here. Whatever he was doing, it didn't look much like sorcery. If anything, she would call it high-school math and physics. There are snatches she understands -- Doppler Effect, red-shift, infinite integral, divergent series -- intermingled with abstractly magic-sounding phrases like Blue, Reversal, Pillar of Light. The Limitless Technique, infinity, the reason why she cannot touch Gojo-san of her own will, was born and nurtured in these books.

“Hi.” Gojo-san is suddenly behind her. “Found my old school notes, hm?”

“Why do they keep them in here?”

“Sensitive stuff. Although even if someone read this they couldn’t take me down. I’m too strong, and also, these notes are kind of incomprehensible. It’s probably also for the next version of me, in half a millennium or whatever.”

“Half a millennium?”

“Yep, didn’t I tell you? The Limitless technique is not uncommon, but my eyes are.” He winks at her. “That’s what allows me to sense space acutely enough to manipulate it. Limitless is almost useless without the Six Eyes.”

“I see,” says Tsumiki, and only when the words leave her mouth she realizes she actually does see. For once, she understands. “The convergent series. You divide space into a sequence whose sum approaches the limit of a barrier you choose -- so, your body -- which prohibits any object from completely touching you. The Red and Blue I hear you talk about. It’s the redshift and blueshift of objects when you make space collapse or diverge, like how the light from a star shifts in wavelength if its distance from the point of observation is increasing or decreasing. That’s all it is.”

“Yes.” Gojo-san blinks at her, maybe seeing her anew. Then he smiles, warm as the sun. “That’s all it is. Easy-peasy.”

“I think I have everything I need.” Megumi closes the Ten Shadows book and looks over at them. “What’s going on over there?”

“Oh, nothing to worry your little head about,” Gojo-san says. Tsumiki should absolutely not cherish Megumi’s twitch of annoyance as much as she does. “So do you guys want to get out of here like I do, or are you hungry?”

Neither of them want to answer that loaded question, but Megumi’s stomach does it for them by grumbling loudly. Gojo-san laughs, apparently unbothered.

“Dinner with the Gojos it is, then.”

Sayaka is still waiting for them outside the outer library, far enough to remain out of earshot but close enough to find them as soon as they exit. She stares into space like a video-game NPC. Tsumiki wonders if this woman needs to get herself a smartphone, or if she’s even allowed to play Candy Crush while waiting for whomever she serves.

“Woah, did you move at all?” asks Gojo-san.

“Where can I escort you?” she deflects.

“The kids are hungry. If your offer still stands, let’s eat.”

Sayaka’s face lights up. “Yes, of course.”

“So there are kids you want me to meet?” Gojo-san says as they cross the courtyard.

“Yes, there are some teenage sorcerers. Nothing like you, of course, just Limitless users or similar. But they genuinely dream of meeting you. They’re probably at the training grounds now.”

“The elders don’t want to lecture me?”

“Oh, they do. But I took the liberty to make some excuses.”

“Sayaka, what a legend you are.” Addressing Megumi and Tsumiki, he says, “She used to cover for me when I would sneak out as a child.”

“Yes, I got very good at playing dumb,” Sayaka says, and with her permanent air of utter neutrality, Tsumiki can believe it.

When Gojo-san opens the door to the dojo, the kids fall over themselves in respect. Two boys slightly older than Megumi are in the center with a dozen others crowded on the edges. Tsumiki spots two girls, and they spot her, eyes shifting from Gojo-san to Tsumiki. Maybe they think that she is also his pupil. What an alluring thought, though wildly untrue.

“Yep, it’s me,” Gojo-san says, “your least favorite cousin.”

Supposedly, Gojo-san is a professional teacher, but he seems ill at ease among the over-eager children in the dojo. He wanders among their frozen forms, like children playing a playground game, and finally drops to the floor beside the two boys who were brawling in the middle.

“What are your names?” he asks.

“Renji,” mutters one of the boys.

“Okay, look alive, Renji.” Gojo-san pokes Renji’s forehead and he nearly topples over. Megumi scoffs. “Kids, look up and act normal. Take that brat for example.” Gojo-san gestures at Megumi. “Never spoke a word in keigo to me in his life. Haven’t obliterated him yet, have I?”

The room’s attention turns collectively to Megumi, who doesn’t bother acknowledging them.

“So, Renji, I could sense your bad energy conservation from a hundred meters away. Want to demonstrate?”

For the next half hour, Gojo-san walks through what must be basic jujutsu forms with the kid sorcerers, correcting them candidly, sugarcoating nothing. Tsumiki takes it all in: the techniques she can’t perceive, the punches that she can. Hearing it from Gojo-san’s mouth, sorcery is not the mysterious magic she always thought it was. It’s governed by logic, enabled by intelligence and creativity. It’s exactly the sort of thing Tsumiki would excel at, if only she were blessed with the ability to wield it.

After sparring briefly with Renji, who is supposedly the best of the teenagers in the room, Gojo-san points at the threshold of the dojo, where Tsumiki and Megumi are still standing.

“Megumi, want in?” He shrugs, looking utterly bored. “No technique, for a challenge?”

Renji bristles at this. “I don’t need a handicap.”

Gojo-san pats his head kindly. “Yes, you do.”

Megumi looks at Tsumiki, then at Renji. Then back at Tsumiki.

“I’m good,” he announces. “Can we eat?”

The room collectively droops, having lost their chance to see the Ten Shadows in action. But Gojo-san doesn’t press it. Instead, at his indication, they all pile out of the dojo and follow Sayaka to wherever the kids normally eat.

“Satoru-sama is gone,” Renji suddenly notes; sure enough, he’s disappeared from the front of the pack. Sayaka shrugs, neutral as always, though Tsumiki is sure that she was the one who enabled his silent exit. Apparently this was the upper limit of his tolerance of his family, perhaps only a kindness he allowed as a favor to Sayaka.

In the dining room, Megumi sits down on the floor beside Renji at his invitation. Tsumiki moves to sit beside him, but Sayaka cuts in,

“Oh, you can eat with the other attendants. Just follow me.”

“I’m his sister,” Tsumiki says.

“Okay. I’m Satoru-sama’s cousin,” Sayaka says, with genuine confusion.

“She’s not my attendant,” Megumi snaps. “Gojo-sensei had his cousins wait on him? No wonder he’s so hopeless.”

Collectively, the room cringes. Tsumiki steps on Megumi’s foot to silence him. Megumi hisses at her. Sayaka flinches, body tensing in expectation. When Tsumiki removes her foot and Megumi doesn’t do anything except shoot her another glare, Sayaka slowly relaxes, her eyes wide with disbelief.

“This is bullshit. You can sit here,” Megumi says, then, to the room at large with the bite of a challenge: “She can sit here.”

Renji shrugs. The rest of the handful of teenage sorcerers in the room nod uncomfortably, too polite to protest against the breach of custom. Because it’s Megumi -- the protege of their Satoru-sama, the holder of the Ten Shadows technique -- they will allow his impunity.

“I’ll go with Sayaka-san,” Tsumiki says.

Megumi’s mouth twists in displeasure. “I won’t let them treat you like --”

“Megumi,” she cuts him off, “Please don’t make a scene. I’m going with Sayaka-san.”

Megumi scoffs and turns his glare to the table. He probably sees Tsumiki relenting to the status quo as yet another mark of weakness, the same way he looks down on the victims of the bullies that he strings up on flagpoles. He doesn’t understand. How could he? In the world of the jujutsu sorcerer, Megumi is an apex predator, and Tsumiki is the rabbit he spares with his benevolence.

“You can stay, you know,” Sayaka says quietly to Tsumiki as they leave the room. “Sorry for assuming. I just thought…”

“I’m not a sorcerer, but Gojo-san brought me along with Megumi. The only plausible explanation is that I’m his attendant.” Sayaka nods sheepishly. “It’s fine. I’m beginning to understand how things work here.”

“It’s not really as bad as you think,” Sayaka says. “Yes, there’s a hierarchy, but as long as everyone keeps to their place there isn’t trouble.”

Tsumiki thinks of the way Sayaka flinched when Tsumiki stepped on Megumi’s foot. Would that be considered out of place? Would that simple disrespect have invited punishment?

“You were Gojo-san’s attendant,” she says instead of pushing it. “What was he like?”

Sayaka worries her teeth against her lip and hesitates for several seconds. “Different. Very different than he is now. He was the product of how he was raised, I suppose.”

“So, super arrogant,” Tsumiki surmises.

Sayaka doesn’t deny it, instead saying, “He was not unkind. He was never unkind. I think…” She casts a glance behind them, to make sure they are alone in the hallway. “Any child would enjoy being spoiled rotten, but I think he was very, very lonely. That was why some of his attendants were close to his age, like me -- to act as companions if he so desired. But we weren’t equals, and we both knew it. He had no true friends.

“The family elders were livid when he decided to attend Jujutsu Tech, but they couldn’t stop him. I still remember the first time he came home for vacation -- the last, actually, because he stopped coming back after that. He was the happiest I’ve ever seen him. He kept telling me about how much better it is out there, how there are no stuffy rules and customs. I remember he said, Sayaka, you have to get out of here, as if I could just leave.”

“You can just leave. People have done it before. Gojo-san did it.”

“The family keeps to themselves. Satoru-sama is an exception, but generally, if you leave, you don’t come back. The clan is all I’ve ever known. I’m content and respected here. Why would I subject myself to the struggle and loneliness of the outside world?”

“I can understand that,” Tsumiki says. “Sometimes, it’s easier to live within the status quo.”

“Precisely.” Sayaka stops outside a room at the end of the hall, where presumably the attendants are eating. “I take it… he treated you and your brother very differently than he was treated.”

“So differently that I think he must have been trying to exactly reverse his childhood,” Tsumiki admits. “He loves -- it sounds stupid, but he loves fun. He loves having fun, and he loves it when we’re having fun. To be honest, he doesn’t know how to take care of children properly, but no one has ever cared for us the way he has. We are both deeply indebted to him.”

Sayaka smiles, sad and fond. “I’m glad he found what the Gojo clan never gave him.”

She opens the door and introduces Tsumiki to the rest of the attendants before she can ask her what she means. She and Sayaka sit with Midori, who’s about eighteen and does have a smartphone or at least an Internet connection, as Tsumiki very quickly learns.

“So Shibuya at night has to be wild in real life, right?”

“I’ve never been.”

“What? But you live in Tokyo!”

“I live in Saitama. Also, I’m thirteen. What clubs am I going to?”

“I saw this viral bakery that just opened up…”

After half an hour of this, Tsumiki cuts in, “Well, why don’t you just go to school in Tokyo and try this all yourself?”

Sayaka and Midori both stare openly at her.

“Oh, right. No university allowed, I bet.”

“It’s not that it’s not allowed. I just don’t know anyone who’s ever gone. I think it would imply leaving the household,” says Midori.

“And you don’t want to leave.”

Midori shrugs. “Honestly, I’ve thought about it. But I like my family. Plus, I have siblings. I don’t want to, like, never see them again. Wouldn’t you do the same for your Zen’in brother if you lived in the clan?”

“I think I would,” she admits. “Megumi hasn’t told me much about the Zen’in clan. Do you know what it’s like? Compared to here?”

“Well, take our words with a generous shake of salt, because they’re supposedly our sworn enemies,” Sayaka says. “But I’ve heard it’s much, much worse.”

Midori adds, “Yeah, the Zen’in have collected techniques into the family for centuries, you know? Power is number one to them. In the Gojo family, if you’ve got Satoru-sama’s combo you’re idolized, but since the other techniques are somewhat weak everyone else is mostly on the same level. The old dudes are certainly the ones in charge most of the time, but we sometimes have female elders, especially if they’re sorcerers. In the Zen’in, it’s male sorcerer or trash.”

“Okay, Midori is just talking rumors,” says Sayaka. “But it is true that given his technique, Fushiguro Megumi would have been revered in the Zen’in clan, likely to a similar extent to Satoru-sama. I don’t understand what Satoru-sama could have said to make him choose to live alone rather than under their care.”

“I do,” Tsumiki says. She’s on a roll, understanding so many things today. Shows what a girl can do when she’s not shut out of key information for years. “It must have been to protect me.”

“Oh, how kind,” says Midori, practically melting.

“Is it?” mutters Tsumiki. “Would’ve been kinder if he told me one-tenth of the things I had to find out for myself today.”

“You never knew?” Sayaka’s gaze is sharp, keen -- reminiscent of Gojo-san when he’s paying attention.

“I understood nothing. As far as I was made aware, Megumi’s family was mean, so we weren’t going to stay with them. Instead, Tokyo Jujutsu Tech would fund our living expenses on the condition that Megumi became a sorcerer. It’s obvious given this context -- but I never knew. I never knew that it was just me who would suffer if we went to the Zen’in clan, not him.”

“They wouldn’t have been exactly lenient on him, though,” Sayaka concedes. “He would have had to train hard.”

“So? Gojo-san has him train hard as is.”

Sayaka laughs wryly. “This is different. Perhaps Satoru-sama, once made to bear the traditional way of sorcery instruction, has decided not to continue the same way with his pupils. I can tell that he doesn’t train Fushiguro Megumi the way he was trained. It’s evident in the way you both talk about him.”

Tsumiki recalls the way Gojo-san had relished keeping his teacher’s heads down when they talked to him. “You mean, because we don’t hate him?”

Sayaka says nothing, just sips her miso soup. Suddenly, Tsumiki can’t stand being there a moment longer, among these women who chit-chat about the house where she may have grown up as if it’s a horror folktale. They fold in reverence to the Satoru-sama whose traditional training they gloss candidly over, as if it were natural to despise your teachers, to know your own mother so little that you can hardly recognize her.

It’s easier to live within the status quo, Tsumiki had said just minutes ago. But she wouldn’t have let such cruelty pass her by; she wouldn’t have let this happen to Megumi. Or would she, if this was all she had ever known? If she had no other choice but to remain silent?

Tsumiki excuses herself, ignoring Sayaka’s gaze following her keenly, and wanders through the maze of the estate. The occasional stare finds her -- her dark hair and modern clothing stand out in the sea of Gojos -- but she proceeds mostly unbothered through the property.

She expects that Gojo-san has escaped as far as possible. Sure enough, Tsumiki finds him sitting on the fence at the property border, facing away from the estate. When she approaches, he must sense her with his mysterious Six Eyes because he hops down to join her.

“Had enough of your family?” Tsumiki ventures.

“They don’t have anything interesting to say.” Gojo-san shrugs. “Had enough, too?”

“I ate with the attendants.”

“Ah, I should’ve stepped in,” Gojo-san says. “Non-sorcerer tailing Megumi, they’d pin you a servant.”

“No, it was fine. It was good, actually.”

Gojo-san hums. “Sayaka dished out some good gossip?”

“I think she’d subject herself to some sort of punishment if she talked trash about you.”

“Sounds about right,” Gojo-san snorts. “Sayaka’s cool. I always thought we could’ve been friends, but it was all Satoru-sama with her. Is she doing well?”

“You can ask her yourself.”

“No, I can’t,” Gojo-san says. Tsumiki finds herself agreeing, trying to imagine a scenario in which Sayaka would actually respond honestly to such a question from Gojo-san.

“You’re wearing your bandages again,” she notices.

“Yeah, even taking them off was a dumb concession of mine. It helps me focus -- the information from the Six Eyes is overwhelming. Even those glasses I used to wear weren’t enough. But my teachers never liked that. They thought it was a handicap.”

“They don’t have any power over you anymore. You definitely demonstrated that today.”

“I know, right?” Gojo laughs, but the sound is hollow.

“It must have been so strange. Growing up here.”

“Well, I was treated like royalty. Anything I wanted, I got it. Pretty cool, right?”

“I’d rather have my childhood than yours,” Tsumiki says. “Sorry. Is that considered out of line?”

Gojo-san tugs on her ponytail. “You have too much attitude, Tsumiki.”

“Thank you,” Tsumiki continues quietly. “If this was the Gojo clan, I can’t imagine the Zen’in.”

“Stop saying that,” he says. His voice has that plastic veneer to it which means he’s getting uncomfortable. “No thanks allowed.”

“But they told me some things neither you nor Megumi ever bothered sharing. They told me that in the Zen’in clan, to be a non-sorcerer is to have no value. Doubly so if you are a woman. It doesn’t take much to put two and two together.” Tsumiki steels herself. “The contract with the school. Your caretaking. It’s all because you canceled the deal with the Zen’in. And you canceled it because of me.”

Gojo-san is quiet for once in his life, the thin line of his mouth inscrutable.

“I asked Megumi what he preferred,” he says evenly.

“And what did he say? All of it.”

“He asked if you would be happy with the Zen’in. I said there was absolutely no way.”

“You never asked me.” She wishes she didn’t sound so petulant, but she feels petulant. Always the child left out of the world she wasn’t meant to understand. “Why didn’t you think to ask me?”

Gojo-san sighs. The exhaustion, the way his shoulders slump, is so unlike him that it’s unsettling. “I didn’t even consider it, Tsumiki. That’s the truth. I came there for Megumi, and I figured in the end, it’s his life he’s bartering, so --”

“His life is my life,” Tsumiki snaps, “because we have nothing else but each other. Nothing! Do you know what that means? That means I would have gladly gone to the Zen’in clan, if he didn’t have to become a sorcerer, if we could be safe together.”

“You are delusional if you think you would be safe in the Zen’in clan,” Gojo-san laughs harshly. “And Megumi? They would’ve made him a sorcerer. No choice about it. Like me.”

“I know. Inherited technique, clan heir. Even I understand that. But it’s different, because he did it for me.”

“And why is that so bad?”

“Not everyone is the strongest sorcerer ever.”

“Megumi will survive me and surpass me,” Gojo-san says, like a chant, the words rolling off his tongue like he recites them morning and night. “Also, if you must know, I plan to ask Megumi seriously when he gets to his third year if he really thinks he can do it. I don’t want kids becoming sorcerers without their hearts in it. He’d go crazy.”

“He’ll go crazy rather than answer you honestly.”

“You think so?” The faintest tinge of fear colors the question. Another emotion that has no place having anything to do with Gojo-san.

“You gave Megumi the choice, even though leaving him to the Zen’in would have been easier for you, all told. You looked after us all these years. But that kindness, to Megumi especially, is an obligation. He would sooner die than leave a debt as large as that unpaid.”

“Do you feel like you have to repay Megumi even though he would’ve been a sorcerer anyway? Just because he did it for your sake?”

“Yeah, I do,” Tsumiki says, and even with the bandages over his eyes, it’s obvious that Gojo-san’s face falls. “It doesn’t mean I love him less. But I owe Megumi everything I have.”

“Why do you think he did it?” Gojo-san asks abruptly. “Made the choice. He didn’t even ask, will I be happy there? I might’ve said yes. He would have been spoiled rotten, at least. But he asked about you and then made the decision. Why?”

“We were bound at the hip. He couldn’t imagine a life without me.”

“Sure, but he asked if you would be happy. There’s only one logical conclusion. I’ll leave you to say it.”

“It was important to him,” she admits, “that I was happy.”

“Why?”

“Because I…” She swallows; she knows the answer. “I chose to love him.”

“There we go. In my opinion, that’s the biggest debt of all, Tsumiki.”

“Is that why he treats me like I’m made of glass, you think?”

“Because he wants to protect you in return? Of course,” Gojo-san laughs. “That’s very Megumi of him. But that doesn’t sound like it’s what you want at all.”

“It’s not. I understand his intent. But you guys can’t take me to the precipice of the sorcerer’s world and just leave me dangling there.”

“In fact, judging by the way you rambled to me about my technique today, I think you might do a decent job jumping off that cliff.” He’s silent for a moment, then says, “Did Megumi ever tell you about windows?”

“As a rule of thumb, Megumi tells me nothing at all.”

“True. Well, in short, windows are links between the human and sorcerer worlds. They have normal lives and jobs, but they investigate curses, report on them to sorcerers, and other stuff like that. You’d need to be able to see curses, but there are ways I can make that happen without making you observe a murder.”

Tsumiki considers the possibility. It’s so different from the outcome of the step-ladder she has been climbing so steadily for her whole life.

“I don’t know how much Megumi would like that. He seems to want me as far away from sorcery as possible.”

“Honestly, I get the impulse. But it’s not his life, is it?”

Tsumiki considers this. His life is my life, Tsumiki told Gojo-san just minutes ago: by that definition, her life is also Megumi’s. He is willing to sacrifice for her exactly what she is willing to sacrifice for him: that is, everything. And so they will inevitably come to a crossroads. Megumi cannot protect Tsumiki without boxing her far away from him, and Tsumiki cannot abide the idea of living her life boxed away from Megumi.

In gratitude for being saved, in gratitude for Megumi’s contractual sorcery, Tsumiki has always bowed her head, done what was asked of her, and gone above and beyond that. But it’s not what she wants, she realizes vividly, the clarity tasting sour in the back of her mouth. She wants to stay side-by-side with Megumi and Gojo-san; she doesn’t want to grow up alone. And if Megumi is really willing to sacrifice everything for her -- if he really wants her to be happy, not just still and safe -- then he will understand that.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

III. THE EYE OF GOD

Megumi is unimpressed by Terashima Souta. He talks like he’s Megumi’s senior, even though his cursed energy output is so mediocre Megumi is fairly sure he could snuff it out with a forceful exhale. Megumi nods politely as Terashima lectures him on things he learned when he was seven and daydreams about relaxing in some nice cold water. Tsumiki’s not even here to demand that they race and then kick his ass. Megumi could float in the water and stare at the thunderclouds stacking up in the sky. When they burst he could close his eyes and listen to the sheets of rain patter against the pool. That would be relaxing.

“Hey, Fushiguro. It’s not a bad look to zone out on the job.”

“Sorry,” says Megumi, and observes that they’ve reached the location of the curse. A public pool. How nice. Maybe he will actually take a swim after this.

“Do you want to take a shot at spotting the curse?” says Terashima kindly.

Megumi hears Tsumiki’s voice in his ear nagging at him to treat good people with good. And bad people also with good. She really doesn’t shut up, Megumi’s ear-Tsumiki. Megumi settles for not reacting to any of it and just jerking his head towards where the curse is skulking around the locker rooms. Maybe it’s a curse of self-consciousness. Given the human tendency to always cave into others’ opinions, Megumi isn’t too surprised.

“It’s a Grade 3+,” Terashima tells him. “How would you approach the attack?”

You tell me, Megumi wants to say, since you seem to know everything.

“Well, we didn’t even put up a curtain.”

“Of course. Pass!” At Terashima’s slight flush, it’s obvious that he forgot, but Megumi lets him play it off. “And then what?”

“To minimize damage, I’d probably lure it into the open. I would use my snake to enclose it within the confines of the pool and use my toads to give me mobility.”

Actually, his elephant would be ideal for this scenario, as it’s well-suited to water. But it’s in the stronger set of shikigami and he’s months from taming it. The last time he tried, he wiped out in two minutes and Gojo-sensei laughed at him for a week straight.

“Good plan,” says Terashima brightly, despite knowing nothing about the Ten Shadows. “Unfortunately, I am on strict orders to make sure you just watch, although I have also been warned that you’re pretty obstinate.”

So Gojo-sensei got to him. Well, time to make a fool of him by defying expectations.

“I get it,” he says mildly. “Go ahead.”

Terashima blinks, but when Megumi puts up no fight, Terashima approaches the locker room with only a backwards glance cast at Megumi to make sure he stays put. His technique is something pattern-related, judging by his strange footwork. Maybe it’s a Dance Dance Revolution technique.

At his first hit, Megumi cracks it: it’s a Street Fighter-style technique, and the footwork is him setting up combos. Actually, that’s kind of interesting. Megumi wonders what he would do with a quirky 2000s-era technique instead of his archaic inherited powers. Probably be nagged a little less to train.

Megumi watches, mildly entertained, as Terashima punches and kicks the locker room spirit out towards the pool. He sets up with a dramatic little dance, and then in a blitz of cursed-energy jabs, the spirit goes flying into the water. Terashima deals the finishing blow with his feet, diving into the pool after it. Flashy, though not that energy-effective. Megumi looks around for a towel as he waits for Terashima to emerge.

It takes a few seconds for Megumi to realize that the curse’s energy hasn’t dissipated. He locks into the pool and realizes, in a chest-crushing rush, what is about to happen just as it does.

Terashima shoots out of the water, neck locked in the grip of several long, spined fingers. The rest of the curse lumbers out of the pool, easily six meters tall and thrice as wide. The locker room spirit had been a decoy, a mask. This spirit is at least a Grade 2, maybe even Grade 1. Its cursed energy overwhelms Megumi’s too much for him to tell.

Megumi summons the serpent and the rabbits, sending out the rabbits for distraction as the serpent winds up. But the curse whisks them aside easily with one of six arms, using the other to swat away the serpent without letting go of Terashima. In the air, he is utterly helpless, unable to land a single hit. Megumi pulls the shikigami back; they’ll get destroyed at this rate. He needs to think. He needs a plan. He needs to call for help.

For one second, he hesitates, mind spinning. And in that second, the curse crushes Terashima Souta’s neck in its hand.

Megumi looks at his hands. They are covered in speckles of blood. Not his, because Megumi is intact. It’s Terashima’s, who is lying in two pieces in the water. Megumi has one second to realize this before it’s him who is swung into the air, staring down into the curse’s hungry smile.

Looking down into the eye of death, Megumi brings his hands together.

“Max Elephant,” he whispers.

The sheer energy necessary to summon it almost wipes him out. But the elephant is large enough to swat the pool spirit back, defending against its arms with a fan of water. It lurches back and the elephant spews water, driving it deep against the pool wall. The continuous suction of its trunk presses the pool spirit deeper and deeper -- a whirlpool. Within seconds the pool is a single vortex. Megumi senses the exact moment the spirit is vaporized into nothing. The pool explodes in a spray of water, raining mist and blood in all directions and blowing Megumi several meters backwards. He braces against the locker room door, struggling for his phone to dial Gojo-sensei.

“Come now,” Megumi wheezes. “Send someone. Come now. All wrong. Used the elephant.”

The phone beeps; Gojo-sensei has hung up. Or maybe his phone kicked the bucket and he is well and truly fucked.

The lumber of approaching footsteps means that the elephant has turned on its next target: its naive summoner. Megumi staggers to his feet and summons the dogs, the snake, and the rabbits. The effort sends spots swimming across his vision.

“Snake, restrict movement,” he barely manages. “Rabbits, under its feet. Dogs, stay. Protect me.”

The snake was a bad call, he realizes instantly, as the elephant easily entraps it in its trunk. But he can’t manage any more summons, so he has to press forward with the rabbit offensive, which the elephant sends floating away with another fan of water.

The dogs leap forward as the elephant charges, but even combined they are a tenth of its size. They barely manage to nick its ankles before they too are sent flying. And then Megumi is well and truly alone, merciless in the face of the power that is supposed to be his, the spirit that is meant to be his protector.

“Enough bullying for today.” Megumi hears Gojo-sensei before he sees the elephant disintegrate into pieces, vanquished. “Leave it for another time.”

And there he is, bandages off, surveying the scene with mild concern. He is pristine and godlike in the carnage around them.

“Terashima?” he asks. Megumi shakes his head.

“Ah. Too bad.” Gojo-sensei hops across the wreckage of the pool to Megumi and crouches to his level. “Hm, overexerted, I see. Wasn’t it a Grade 3?”

“It was a decoy.” Facing Gojo-sensei’s complete nonchalance, Megumi somehow manages to speak steadily. “There was a 2+ in the pool. Killed Terashima. I killed it with the elephant.”

“Decoys are rare, but the windows and assistants who assign curses usually aren’t skilled enough to see them.” Gojo-sensei looks him over. He reaches out, as if to help Megumi up, and then seems to catch himself. He retracts his arm and turns around. “Well, you’re mostly alright, aren’t you? Let’s go.”

Megumi’s blood is crashing in his ears. He cannot stand up. He cannot do anything ever again.

“Come on now,” says Gojo-sensei, still not turning around. “Stand up.”

And so Megumi stands up.

---

“Hi, Megumi!” Tsumiki’s chirping voice slices knife-sharp into him as soon as he enters the kitchen. “How was the job?”

Megumi looks into her warm, dark eyes, at the balanced meal she has laid out for him on the kitchen table, and sees their lives play out in parallel before him. Megumi, accumulating blood on his hands. Tsumiki, doing science or art, something beautiful and safe. He has always known that their lives would diverge. But today, for the first but not the last time, he has gone where she cannot follow.

“Same as always,” he says, and takes the food to his room.

---

“You’re getting diligent, hm?” Gojo-sensei remarks, examining the hem of his million-yen shirt but probably still looking at Megumi with at least three of his alleged six eyes. “You used to mess around with your dogs for an hour and call it a day when you were a kid.”

It’s the first time that Gojo-sensei has commented since Megumi started asking to be trained six weeks ago. The drive in the backseat of Ijichi’s car to Jujutsu Tech has begun to feel familiar, and the high-schoolers nod at him in acknowledgement now instead of staring openly.

“Well, I’m not a kid anymore.” Megumi hesitates, and adds, “I understand that you’re busy. If it’s too much, tell me.”

“You’re getting polite, too,” Gojo-sensei snorts. “Are you going to start talking to me in keigo?”

Megumi realizes that he probably should. Tsumiki has always spoken formally to Gojo-sensei, with the appropriate gratefulness and deference. Megumi, on the other hand, took particular pleasure in talking as rudely as possible. That’s no way to talk to the person to whom we owe our lives, Tsumiki always used to say. Megumi would respond, that’s what he deserves for making us owe him our lives.

“Should we start?” he says instead of answering.

Gojo-sensei flops dramatically onto the ground. “I’m tired. I don’t want to.”

“What did you travel to school on a Saturday for then?” Gojo-sensei bites back a smile at the snappish tone to Megumi’s voice. Somehow, this irritates Megumi beyond belief. “I mean. I can ask one of the students then.”

“Come sit on the floor here with me.” Resistance to any inane plan of Gojo-sensei’s is futile, so Megumi obeys. “Very good. What do you like to eat these days?”

In truth, not much of anything at all. “The same foods as always.”

“I haven’t been out to eat with you kids recently. We could go to a nice fancy restaurant.”

“I’m okay. And Tsumiki is busy with entrance exam prep.”

“She could probably use the break.” And now Gojo-sensei fixes him with his chilling stare, peering over the rims of his glasses. “And so could you, hm?”

“Not really. I’m quite delinquent at school.”

“Yes, I should know. I’ve been getting an annoying amount of phone calls recently.”

Megumi wasn’t aware of this part. “I see.”

“It’s fine, I treat them like prank calls,” Gojo-sensei waves him off. “Just let me feed you. You’ve lost weight.”

“I’m a teenager. It happens.”

“Something something puberty. Blegh.” What an adult, Megumi muses. “Yes, you are a teenager. Don’t teenagers have angsts?”

“Do they?”

“They do.”

“I don’t think I’ve reached that age yet, then.”

“Okay, delinquent boy. Ah! Maybe you miss me and you’re finally turning around from your grumpy anti-Satoru phase. Which has admittedly lasted your whole life.”

“Gojo-sensei, I really would just like to train.”

“Why?” Gojo-sensei says it with his usual lightheartedness, despite the fact that it’s possibly the most unanswerable question Megumi has been asked.

“Because I’m going to be a sorcerer.”

“Yeah, but you’re not one yet.”

“But I know I --” Megumi exhales, tries to organize his thoughts and flatten the irritation out of his voice. “Look. You recruit students. Then they know they’re going to be sorcerers. I already know. Doesn’t it make sense for me to optimize my time?”

“Not really. Growth is not linear. It depends on creativity and inspiration. And maybe desperation. You could train all you want and still be the weakest in your year.”

“It’s not about being strong, per se. It’s about doing what I’m supposed to do.”

“And you’re supposed to do sorcery?”

“Yes. Well. I don’t know. If I’m going to do sorcery…” Against his best wishes, the truth is finally compelled from him. As always with Gojo-sensei. “... I’d rather not watch my coworkers die, if I can help it.”

“To some extent, you won’t be able to.”

“I know.”

“Terashima’s death was a fluke.”

“He died. That’s what matters at the end of it.”

“And this is what you’re doing about it?”

“What else is there to do?”

“Spoken like my student, I suppose,” Gojo-sensei hums. He stands up, stretching his arms over his head. “Hey, d’you want to talk to Nanami or something?”

“Nanami-san? I hardly know him. About what?”

“I don’t know. Everything you’re not telling me, I guess.”

Megumi wonders if this is tactlessness, razor-sharp intuition, or some baffling combination. “No, I don’t want to talk to Nanami-san. I don’t… have anything to talk about.”

“Okay, fine. Just thought I’d ask.” Gojo-sensei shrugs. “Just don’t bottle everything up and go insane.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Who knows? Teenagers are unpredictable,” Gojo-sensei says brightly. “Okay, so you want to train. Fine, I’ll beat you up terribly.”

“Thank you.”

“Gross, I don’t want to hear those words.” Gojo-sensei wrinkles his nose. “Just throw me a punch already.”

How is this guy surprised that Megumi doesn’t talk to him? Although, if Megumi had to say, it isn’t because of Gojo-sensei’s tactlessness and generally bad personality. Mostly. It’s mostly that Megumi has never allowed Gojo-sensei to be someone he can confide in, because that isn’t who Gojo-sensei is. They’re both comfortable here, facing each other on the wood-paneled floor, thinking about movement and strategy. This is where they belong, in respect to one another.

“Alright.” Megumi steadies his stance. “Incoming.”

Gojo-sensei blocks his attack lazily and dodges the subsequent strikes with the barest movements. He’s not even using cursed energy. Megumi pulls back. Gojo-sensei bounces up and down on his heels, languidly awaiting Megumi’s next move.

“When are you going to stop going easy on me?”

“Maybe when you’re not a child,” says Gojo-sensei with a smile. Well, if he’s making some private joke, Megumi doesn’t get it.

“I’m already not a child,” Megumi hisses.

“Well, I don’t care. The Shadows are bigger than you are right now.”

“It’s my technique.”

“But it controls you. And it will continue to control you as long as you think like this.”

“What’s so wrong about how I think?”

Gojo-sensei’s grin widens. Megumi’s not surprised; one of his favorite things to do is criticize how Megumi fights, after all.

“You’re narrow-minded. You’re detail-oriented, but uncreative. You see the Ten Shadows for what it is instead of what it could be. You impose your own limits. Everything in your life lies within a boundary, Megumi, that only you believe exists. You think I don’t see that?”

“How would I know if I’m imposing my limits if they’ve never been tested?” Megumi lets the energy trickle from his fists, the anger so sharp, the despair so steady. He is so calm. “Just push me. Just push me and see what happens.”

Gojo-sensei takes off his glasses. There is no humor in his eyes. “I have to say, for once I like your attitude.”

There’s no further warning before Gojo-sensei strikes. Megumi acts faster than he can think: dodge, summon. Strike. Block. And so it goes, until Gojo-sensei is at his chest. Megumi pulls the snake between them, and though he knows Gojo-sensei is only using a thousandth of his power, there is still some satisfaction in seeing him reel backward.

“Very good,” he says.

He smiles openly, the way he only smiles at Megumi when they are fighting. Megumi breathes, the tension that normally pulls his heartstrings taut finally relaxing.

This is where he belongs.

--

Tsumiki spends her walk home from the grocery store thinking about Megumi, as she does somewhat frequently these days. Something is wrong with him. Or more precisely, something went wrong with him about two months ago, maybe on a sorcery job, and Megumi hasn’t been the same since. Megumi is, by nature, sulky, distrustful, and introverted, but his bad mood these days runs deeper than that. He no longer indulges her rambling with that soft neutral look on his face that signals fondness. He’s grown allergic to spending unstructured time alone with her; she can only get him in the living room if the TV is on or there is a chore to be done. She’s tried in several roundabout ways to prod him, but he shuts her down forcefully each time, escalating from snappish to downright mean if she presses.

Well, there are more practical and actionable things to worry about, like what she should make for dinner. She wrestles with the doorknob and clumsily sidles inside, one grocery bag in each arm. She hears Gojo-san and Megumi arguing about something in the living room. When the door clicks shut they both fall silent. So it’s a jujutsu secret, then. Something Tsumiki isn’t supposed to hear.

As she passes the living room, the sharp smell of alcohol catches her attention. She glances at Megumi and Gojo-san, who are both staring at her like children caught stealing. Megumi’s shirt is off one shoulder to make way for a swath of bandages that wrap tightly around Megumi’s torso and arm, the latter of which is immobilized by a sling. Tsumiki carefully sets down the groceries.

“Megumi, what happened?”

Gojo-san and Megumi both cringe, probably at the way her voice is trembling. She can’t overreact. They’ll keep hiding things from her. But there are sirens, sirens, something in her is wailing.

Tsumiki goes to Megumi. Gojo-san scoots away at lightning speed to give her room on the couch. Tsumiki traces Megumi’s shoulder, feather-light, pretending she doesn’t see the anxious fix of his stare.

“Don’t touch --” starts Gojo-san.

“I know,” she cuts him off, and Megumi tenses again. Now she sounds too mad. Why isn’t a girl allowed to feel any reasonable emotions in this house?

“He’s taking me to Ieiri-sensei tonight,” Megumi mumbles, “so this is just temporary. It doesn’t even hurt, not really.”

That’s a lie if she ever heard one. His eyes are red and his voice is scrubbed raw. Tsumiki has always thought Megumi stopped crying when he was a toddler. Maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s just been hiding it.

“Gojo-san,” she says, back still turned to him as she gently traces the extent of Megumi’s injuries, “did you hurt him?”

“I wasn’t trying --” Gojo-san begins, the pitch to his voice like a petulant child’s, but Megumi cuts in:

“He didn’t. He didn’t hurt me. I… a cursed spirit got me.”

Megumi’s gaze shifts over Tsumiki’s shoulder. He and Gojo-san have a silent conversation. Megumi’s mouth pulls into a tight, frustrated line. He hisses between his teeth.

“It wasn’t him?” Tsumiki asks, just to be sure.

“It wasn’t.”

Megumi’s eyes refocus on her, and he meets her gaze so resolutely, she would believe him if it wasn’t the most obvious lie in the world. Tsumiki already knew, of course. But she asked in order to hear their easy lies, to see how easily the two of them knit together against her. They are trying to protect her. She reminds herself that they are only trying to protect her.

Tsumiki stands up. She bends to pick up the groceries.

“I’ll try to be fast with dinner. Twenty minutes or so. Okay?”

---

When the door clicks open, it’s past midnight. Tsumiki peers through the crack of her bedroom door. Gojo-san unties Megumi’s shoes and coaxes Megumi’s feet into his house slippers like he’s a toddler.

“Can do it myself,” he mutters, even as his hand vaguely grasps Gojo-san’s shoulders for support.

Gojo-san stands up and scoops Megumi into his arms despite his incoherent grumbling.

“Hey, shut it, kiddo. Your body’s crashing after the healing job, okay? Stress response or something. Shoko explained it to me once.”

Megumi mumbles something else and presses his head into Gojo-san’s shoulder.

“It’s natural. Not a weakness. Used to happen even to me.” Gojo-san hesitates, his breath hitching. “It was me who messed up. Not you. I…”

Gojo-san’s voice breaks. The world is silent for a second. The wall clock ticks. Then it’s silent again. Tsumiki supposes he really is efficient at everything he does because she reads his mind in just that voice crack and the two seconds that follow.

He carries Megumi to his room. Tsumiki retreats to her bed. But she’s just getting ready to lie down sleeplessly for another six hours when a quiet knock sounds on the door. She remembers, all too late, that Gojo-san’s sorcery gives him every form of sight possible. He’d known she was there all along.

She has no choice but to open the door. She stands on one side of the threshold, Gojo-san on the other. He doesn’t step into her room, and she doesn’t invite him in.

“Tsumiki, I want you to know that it was me who hurt him,” he says in a rushed breath, then adds, quietly, “although I think you knew that already.”

“I did.”

“I didn’t ask Megumi to lie.”

“I know.” She tries to swallow the words, but she fails. “But he lied anyway.”

“He didn’t want you to be angry at me, I think.”

“I’m not angry, honestly.”

Gojo-san’s shoulders relax. She should leave it at that. She’ll leave it at that.

“I should go to bed now. Stay over tonight, it’s late.”

She moves to close the door, but Gojo-san’s foot is blocking it. When she looks up to meet his eyes he’s taken off his glasses, fixing her with terrifying blue.

“Tsumiki. What aren’t you telling me?”

That blue is like looking into the eye of God. The truth is compelled from her.

“He lied to me,” she says, her voice impossibly small. “Which means he chose you.”

“He was just trying to protect you.”

“Why do I need…” She tries to swallow the tears, but they fall anyway. “Why do I need to be protected?”

Gojo-san scrubs a hand through his hair. “It’s hard to explain. If you’re a sorcerer you -- everyone goes through this sort of injury, I guess. It’s a day in the life.”

“Megumi’s not a sorcerer. Not yet.”

“You’re right, he isn’t,” Gojo-san says, quieter than she’s ever heard him, “but he knows. He’s seen it. I have to keep him alive. I have to push him. That’s my job.”

“Why?”

The question hangs in the air. She knows Gojo-san understands what she’s asking. But she elaborates anyway:

“Why is that your job? Why does it have to be your job?”

“It’s the only thing I know how to do.”

“And Megumi? Why does it have to be Megumi’s job?”

There are so many things Gojo-san could say. There are people who need their help, the contract that feeds Megumi and Tsumiki three meals a day requires it. But he seems to understand, as Tsumiki has all along, that all those reasons are false. There is only one real reason, and finally, Gojo-san says it.

“Because…” Gojo-san swallows audibly. “Because I’m sick of doing it alone.”

“That’s selfish.”

“I know.”

“You are so selfish.”

“I know, Tsumiki.” Gojo-san smiles, a bare and unaffected smile she’s only seen him give to her. Maybe it’s a smile for non-sorcerers, for those who don’t know any better than to see him for who he actually is. “Selfish is all I’ve ever been.”

“Then why do you save everyone?”

Gojo-san shrugs jerkily. “Someone I trust told me that’s what I should do.”

“Is there really no way out? For Megumi and for you?”

“Megumi is my way out,” Gojo-san says, barely a whisper. “And Megumi’s way out is if I let him go.”

Gojo-san’s job is to teach Megumi sorcery. Yet when Tsumiki thinks of Gojo-san, she doesn’t really think of sorcery at all. She thinks of him stepping into the apartment with a sleeping Megumi on his hip, winking at Tsumiki before gesturing at the doodles he’d drawn on Megumi’s face. She thinks of arcades on Saturday mornings, stolen hours from the endless demands of the higher-up sorcerers she understands only as some vague evil entity. Culture festivals where Megumi and Tsumiki pretended to not know Gojo-san while he flirted his way into free desserts.

Is this what Gojo-san would lose, if he let Megumi go?

Tsumiki remembers Sayaka’s fond smile: I’m glad he found what the Gojo clan could never give him. She wonders why Gojo-san even needed a contract when everything he’d ever done for them was out of choice and not obligation.

“I consider you family,” Tsumiki says. Gojo-san’s face twitches, as if he wants to protest, but he remains silent. “You are family. I know we would never have known each other if not for the contract, but you are family. You might not think of us the same way. But that’s how I feel about you.”

Gojo-san closes his eyes. Without their faint bluish glow, the apartment is utterly dark. The wall clock ticks. Tsumiki waits, hoping against hope that he will find the right words, that he will finally understand. But when he opens his eyes, she knows from their impenetrable glint that, once again, he will fail her.

Gojo-san says nothing, and then he is gone.

---

Megumi wakes up feeling fine. Ieiri-sensei had, of course, cured him of every trace of the injury. Now all that remains is the memory: his fleeting confidence, the few seconds of white-hot focus he enjoyed exchanging blow for blow with Gojo-sensei. The widening smile on his teacher’s face, as if to say, finally. Finally you are becoming worthy.

And then, the impact. He must have blacked out immediately, because he doesn’t remember the three broken ribs and shattered humerus that Ieiri-sensei informs him he’d sustained. He just remembers waking up in his apartment to Gojo-sensei frowning over him, half his body wrapped in a makeshift sling. He told Megumi that Shoko was busy with the fallout from a six-person mission and that he’d given Megumi some painkillers to survive the hours until she was available.

“That’s fine. I feel fine,” Megumi said, feeling the rough burn of his voice against his throat, as if he’d been screaming. He touched a hand to his cheek and found it sticky; he swiped his tongue around his mouth and found it salty. Finding uncharacteristic seriousness in Gojo-sensei’s gaze, his bare eyes focused entirely on Megumi, he realized that he must have revealed terrible weakness when he’d blacked out. It was even more terrible to not remember, to not know to what extent he had allowed Gojo-sensei to see him break. But he did not address this. They simply remained at stalemate, not speaking a word, until the sound of the door opening startled Megumi into speaking.

“Don’t tell her it was you.”

“I’m not going to just do whatever you tell me.”

“Just don’t tell her. Please.”

“You think I --” But Gojo-sensei was cut off by Tsumiki entering, and everything went to hell after that. Or everything went fine. He still doesn’t really know.

So here Megumi is now, feeling fine. Here he is, avoiding Tsumiki’s eyes in the kitchen. He goes to school and doesn’t even beat anyone up. He just sits at his desk and imagines floating outside his body. He imagines leaving that husk of a body and all its ties behind, all its obligations, all its desires. He sits there, impervious to the increasing irritation in his teachers’ bids to get his attention, until he finds himself in the principal’s office. This is no unfamiliar place to him, although it is bad luck that today happened to be one of the days when one of his teachers decided they’d had enough of him. Whatever. This means they’ll leave him alone for at least a week after this, considering their disciplinary duties fulfilled for the time being.

He is just about ready to nod his way through another lecture when the door opens. Megumi’s stomach drops to his feet; it’s Gojo-sensei. Their eyes meet through his blackout glasses and Megumi knows he’s done for. He is seen, and there is no being unseen by Gojo-sensei.

After charming the principal into releasing them with promises of better discipline at home, Gojo-sensei sits himself down at the school gates and gestures at Megumi, who obediently copies him.

“So you’re doing fine, right?”

“Of course.”

“Not scared shitless of me, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Do you know why you lost so terrifically yesterday?”

And just like that, they’re back. Every road leads back to the path of the sorcerer. Megumi can’t believe he was relishing this just one day ago, talking strategy, feeling on equal footing with Gojo-sensei. Anger fills him as it so often does these days, black as pitch and sticky as tar.

“Yeah, I’m weak.”

“That’s a weak answer.”

“Well, I don’t care.” His voice still sounds hoarse and weary, remnants of the pain he doesn’t remember. “Leave me alone.”

“You lost because your focus was in the wrong place. You were tracking my individual movements in real time instead of considering my motion as a unified entity, which would have allowed you to better predict my strikes.”

The words wash right over him. “Please leave me alone.”

“Are you bitter you lost?” Gojo-sensei presses. “Are you frustrated by your lack of improvement? Because those are both things we can correct.”

We? Megumi thinks. There’s no “we.” Only you.

“Megumi.”

Megumi just wants to bury his head in his folded knees. He wants to lie down and sleep for a decade. But he can’t do any of those things; he can’t show weakness. So he just remains silent and waits for Gojo-sensei to talk himself to death.

“You’re clearly not taking Terashima’s death well, but you won’t talk about what’s going on. You say you want to train, but you can’t handle losing. I don’t understand what it is you want.”

“I don’t understand,” Megumi says, each word feeling leaden, “what it is you want from me.”

“I want you to get stronger,” Gojo-sensei says easily. “You have a lot of potential.”

How he hates that word. Potential. Inherited powers, inherited potential. Nothing to call his own.

“Do you even want to be a sorcerer at all?”

This gets Megumi’s attention. He stares incredulously at Gojo-sensei. How can a man so omniscient be so fucking stupid? Of course not. Of course the fuck not. But it doesn’t matter.

“Actually, I think that’s an unfair question,” Gojo-sensei continues. “I’m not too sure I like being a sorcerer, given the current definition of the word. Do you like sorcery?”

Megumi is tempted to ignore him again or spit back some caustic retort. But, unbidden, the image of his twin dogs come to mind. The low coo of his owl. The black maw of his shadow opening up, the stomach that holds everything he doesn’t want to look at, the mouth that chews up his darkness and spits out power.

“I can’t easily separate sorcery from being a sorcerer.”

“I think we just landed on your problem, then,” Gojo-sensei says. “In order to become excellent at sorcery, you need to be able to hone it single-mindedly, independent of your role as a sorcerer. But in order to survive as a sorcerer, you need a reason to do it. Beyond that fact that I told you so, of course.”

“I don’t think I have a role as a sorcerer. I was just born into it, like you.”

“Now, that’s quite reductive.” If Gojo-sensei is stung by the comparison, he doesn’t show it. “Who are you, Fushiguro Megumi? What is it that you want?”

Megumi tries to wait Gojo-sensei out to no avail. Even behind the glasses, his eyes drill into Megumi with an intensity that feels like physical pain.

Who are you, Fushiguro Megumi? He is a sorcerer; he is a sorcerer-to-be. He is the wielder of the Ten Shadows. He is the stolen Zen’in heir. He is an orphan.

“Why do I have to know? My life has been set out for me anyway.”

“Or you’re just too scared to think otherwise.”

“It’s not mine, though. It’s yours. It’s literally yours.” Gojo-sensei doesn’t react, so he barrels on, “You on your pedestal, telling me, you decide, you choose, your life. It’s not mine. So why should I decide how to live it?”

Gojo-sensei’s eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly. Megumi has spent far too much longer than he’d like to admit trying to decode Gojo-sensei’s poker face. But neither his face nor voice betray his emotions when he says,

“You should start working on your grades. They’ll need to be perfect if you want high schools to look past your disciplinary record.”

“You said Jujutsu Tech doesn’t care about records.”

“That doesn’t matter if I go to Principal Yaga and make sure he doesn’t accept you.”

It takes a second for Gojo-sensei’s words to register. “That’s -- you -- you’re the one who told me to be a sorcerer.”

“I actually never did. I told you to work hard and get strong. Which you clearly haven’t done.”

“Well, the school did. The contract --”

“Whatever. I’m Gojo Satoru. I can make it all go away.”

“Then what was the point? Why all those missions?”

“Because I wanted to teach you,” Gojo-sensei says. “But there are some things you seem to refuse to learn. If you want to believe your life isn’t yours, so be it. But that’ll never be enough. You learn how to stand beside me or you don’t set foot on this campus at all.”

“That’s impossible. I’ll never be you.”

“Well, then you need to be better.” Gojo-sensei stands up. “Come back when you’ve decided what you want. Not what you think I want. Not what you think you’re expected to do. What you want.”

Megumi is so angry he wants to lash out at Gojo-sensei with a strike sharp enough to kill, except that he knows that it will never land. Maybe this is the difference between him and the boy Gojo-sensei wants him to be: that he won’t strike, knowing that it is futile, rather than try anyway and hope that it somehow lands.

“Gojo-sensei,” he says, and before he can reconsider, blurts out, “you said you wanted to teach me. Why?”

It’s not the first time he has asked a variant of this question: why me? Every single time, he has always gotten some answer that was part mischievous and part nonsensical. Today, though, he remains quiet for a long time.

“I thought I told you students aren’t supposed to question their teachers.” Another painful silence. “Well, I’ll indulge you anyway. I wanted a friend.”

And he’s gone, leaving only the echo of his words to seep into Megumi’s skin.

---

The day after Megumi’s injury, Gojo-san is still gone and Megumi is back to normal.

Tsumiki and Megumi look at each other for a long moment when they both emerge into the kitchen. Then Megumi mumbles a “good morning” and the stalemate is broken. Tsumiki doesn’t push it. She is so tired.

School is a drag. Tsumiki misses one question on her algebra exam and obsesses over it throughout the rest of her classes. After school is literature club, and then Tsumiki’s friends want to go to some new coffee shop so they go and Tsumiki buys a latte with Gojo-san’s spending money. Not that he would mind. If anything, he’d probably want Tsumiki to get a pastry too. Out of habit, she buys three, one for each of them to try.

Tsumiki gets home and the apartment is empty; Megumi must be training. She leaves the pastries on the kitchen table and goes to start her homework. Instead, she tries to remember the algebra problem she missed on her exam and redoes it over and over. She fills in grids of graph paper, eroding her pencils down to nothing.

Megumi throws open her door without knocking. Tsumiki presses her pencil so hard it snaps.

“Knock,” she mutters. He snaps something back. She takes off her headphones. “Repeat yourself.”

“I said, what the hell did you tell Gojo-sensei?”

“Language,” says Tsumiki quietly, a deflection.

“I’ll use whatever the fuck language I want,” he hisses, “so tell me why Gojo-sensei sat me down today and asked me if I wanted to be a sorcerer.”

Tsumiki’s heartbeat is suddenly crashing in her eardrums. So Gojo-san actually listened. So Gojo-san actually cared. It’s not that she doubted it, except that she absolutely did. She slowly turns to face Megumi. For months now, his expression towards her has been one of barely-repressed disgust, but today, it’s outright. The sneer on his face is one of utter condescension.

“So do you?”

“It’s not about wanting or not wanting. It’s about our livelihood. Did you forget when we were starving toddlers? Do you feel like going back to play-acting medieval children?”

“If Gojo-san asked you, it means he’s willing to support us regardless of what you choose.”

“That’s not right,” he seethes, pacing in agitated circles around her room. She doesn’t remember the last time she saw him this openly angry. “That’s not -- he shouldn’t do that. Why would he do that?”

“I’m relieved that he would do at least this much.”

“It’s not like I want to be a sorcerer,” Megumi barrels on, ignoring her. “but I have to do sorcery. I have to. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Believe me, I know I don’t.” Tsumiki closes her eyes. “Try me anyway.”

“It’s like a part of my body. My soul, or whatever. I feel -- inside me there’s -- maybe I got it from my dad, but there’s something inside me, Tsumiki, and it’s not good. It’s wild. It’s selfish. It hates. It wants to destroy. And I can only control it through my shadows.”

To her distant surprise, Tsumiki finds that she does understand. There’s something inside her, too, something that hates even Megumi. Something that hates especially Megumi. But she doesn’t have a cursed technique to channel it into good. She, like all non-sorcerers, drips curses, leaks evil into the air. Gojo-san explained it to her once. She replied that she would never curse anyone, and that she loved the whole world. Gojo-san had smiled at that, a gentle, sad smile so unlike his toothy grin that she’d never forgotten it. He’d started to say something, you know, I think love is the most twisted… then he’d trailed off, shook his head. He’d told her this world needed more kids like her in it. So she’d decided to love everything, forever, because that way she would never be the cause of a curse.

Now, she thinks she understands what Gojo-san had wanted to say. Tsumiki drips evil into the air because she loves too much, because she wants too much. Because her pain just bleeds instead of becoming a cursed barrier.

“So what the hell did you tell him, Tsumiki?”

“It’s not your business. But now you know. You don’t have to do this, Megumi.”

“Gojo-sensei trained me for years. I can’t walk all of that back.”

“Your first real mission was only actually last year. All he did was raise us.”

“Yeah, fine, he raised us. So he wasted those years on a kid who won’t even become a sorcerer?”

“Maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe he cares about you, Megumi.”

“In what universe, Tsumiki?” Megumi actually laughs, or something like it, the sound so foreign to Tsumiki it makes her flinch. “You are so naive if you think that Gojo-sensei cares about us. He’s just the same as everybody. I’m just paying my dues.”

“I’m sorry.” Tsumiki’s the one laughing now, because she has bypassed even anger. “Did you just call me naive?”

“You are naive,” Megumi spits, “always have been. Saying I should respect others and then yelling at me for doing what I want. You want the world to be a rosy fantasy, and me to be your sweet little brother. Well, I’m not. I’m angry. I hate people. And they should know it.”

Who’s naive? Tsumiki, who watched her mother leave and woke up to feed Megumi the next day? Tsumiki, who watched Megumi grow up behind the closed gate of the sorcerer’s world, who has always known exactly what she isn’t?

“Megumi, do you think you need me?”

He scoffs, and that’s the only answer she needs. Tsumiki, Megumi’s six-year-old voice says to her. The money ran out. Can we wait a little longer? Who’s naive? Tsumiki, or Megumi, who lies to her face and expects her to believe it? Who doesn’t even remember a life without her and still says that he doesn’t need her?

“I need you,” she says quietly. “I have no problems admitting that. I’ve given up on almost everything. But not you.”

“Give up on me, then.”

I love you, says Tsumiki, because I choose to.

I’ll make you choose otherwise.

Megumi storms out. She feels nothing, she is so cold. She is utterly calm.

---

Gojo-san, unlike Megumi, knocks on her door. The hesitance of the gesture stands out all the more for its incongruity with his characteristic brazenness, but he’s always been surprisingly tentative in certain ways. Asking to be let in is one of them. She’s not sure when he got here or for how long she’s been throwing a private tantrum under her duvet, but a little embarrassment from Gojo-san can’t possibly make this day any worse.

“I’m sulking in peace right now,” Tsumiki whines, which is not explicitly a no, so Gojo-san comes in.

“Your hair is a mess,” he comments. She is fully buried under her blankets, but of course Gojo-san can and does see through them. “Care for a braiding session?”

Tsumiki peeks above the covers to see him wiggling his fingers at her. The gesture is fairly disgusting, especially paired with the shit-eating grin on his face.

“Ooh, you’ve been crying, too,” he notes with apparently a total lack of concern. She wonders at the duality between this Gojo-san and the one who quietly admitted his selfishness to her yesterday. Night and day, in a literal and figurative sense. Yet the nonchalance makes Tsumiki able to speak more at ease. All the arguing and crying of the last two days feel more distant. It’s just Gojo-san, as always, with his banter.

“You’ll make me cry more with the way you brush my hair.” Tsumiki takes her hair brush from her dresser and Gojo-san sits on her bed. “Please don’t sit on my bed with your jujutsu clothes. You kill things in that.”

Gojo-san ignores her. “So why are you sulking and crying?”

“Maybe I’m on my period.”

“No, that was last week,” he says, which is absolutely correct and somewhat unsettling. “Megumi acting up again?”

“Shouldn’t you know? Apparently you asked him if he wants to be a sorcerer and now his angst levels are through the roof.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” he snorts. “He flipped out when I asked him.”

“I told you he’d flip out.”

“I know. Miss Tsumiki is always right.”

He takes the brush from her hand and she relents. His touch is shockingly gentle, nothing like the way he’d tear through her knotted hair when she was a child. Her eyes fall closed as she leans backwards into the brace of Gojo-san’s palm.

“You’re a little older now than this girl I once knew,” Gojo-san says, then adds offhandedly, “She died years ago. My fault. Kind of.”

Tsumiki is not sure what to do with this information. But she has learned that extracting meaning from Gojo-san’s occasional pronouncements ranges from challenging to downright impossible, and the best hope she has is to wait for some form of explanation.

“She was pretty different from you. Super bubbly, hated math. Kind of spoiled. Anyway, she died, and it was my fault. But then I discovered a whole new half to my technique, so I didn’t feel so bad. Isn’t that messed up?”

“She’s in your wallet,” Tsumiki says, piecing it together. “Her, and the woman, and your friend with the long hair.”

“You’ve been snooping, hm?” Gojo-san says lightly, but his hands betray him; they flinch and tighten before settling on Tsumiki’s shoulders.

“It was a long time ago. You dropped it and I looked. I didn’t think much of it.”

“You two are in there too.”

“I know. It just goes to show -- I think the point you’re trying to make doesn’t hold.”

“And what point am I trying to make?”

“That you don’t care, right?”

“I’m not that mean.” Gojo-san resumes brushing her hair, working out a clean center part. “The point I’m trying to make is that I’m very, very much not normal.”

“‘Cause you’re the strongest?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“No offense, Gojo-san, but I don’t really care. Probably because I’m a non-sorcerer and I don’t need you to save me.”

“The non-sorcerers do need me to save them! They just don’t know it.”

“Well, what I mean is that you’re no strange god to me.”

“I know.” Gojo-san briefly plants his chin on Tsumiki’s head, and they look at each other in her dresser mirror, a ridiculous pair of stacked heads. “That’s why I’m telling you all this.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“I felt kind of embarrassed when you called me selfish, Tsumiki. It’s true, and I own it, and usually I’m not fussed about it. But when you said it I felt ashamed.”

“Sorry. I was mad.”

“I beat up your little brother. I think you were justified.” Gojo-san breathes in slightly. “I’m going to tell you a secret. It’s something I never, ever tell my students, because I’m worried they’ll get the wrong idea and twist up their righteous little sorcerer minds. I can’t tell you not to tell Megumi, but I’m going to tell you and trust you to do what you think is right.

“You went to my house. You have an inkling of what my life was like. Right?”

Tsumiki nods. She recalls the look that passed between Gojo-san and his mother, a stranger. She recalls Sayaka and Midori, heads bent so that they wouldn’t have to look cruelty in the eye.

“So I went to Tokyo Jujutsu Tech, thinking that the modern world must have a better way of doing things. They didn’t. It’s a rotten system filled with corrupt idiots. And the system loves killing bright young sorcerers. It kills them fast, but mostly it kills them slow. Like suffocating, but just a little bit, so that you don’t notice until you really can’t breathe. It killed all my classmates. Killed them fast, killed them slow. Even though I was strong enough to manage, I wasn’t very good at looking out for others. So I wound up alone. Boo.

“And I thought, if only I could press reset on the whole damn thing. Except that there’s no button that erases corruption, bigotry, and narcissism. So I had the brilliant idea to raise some strong, kind, and fair students. And that way, they could stand beside me, and they could outlive me. Luckily for me, a few years ago some guy who almost killed me told me about his son who was going to be sold to the Zen’in clan. What a perfect way to start my legacy! So I went and scooped him up, and his big sister who happened to be there as well. I told him he could go to the Zen’in clan, which would be mean to his sister, or become a sorcerer under my tutelage and live comfortably alone. As you know, this kid loves his sister very much, so it was all decided.

“But there’s another choice in there which I never offered him. I’ll get you out of the Zen’in clan, but no need to become a sorcerer. Just chill out for a bit and decide later. I never gave him that choice, because it was of no use to me.

“I suppose I thought if he really didn’t want to, I’d never make him be a sorcerer. I would never make a kid do anything. But it turns out it’s more complicated than that. Whatever my intentions, it seems that Megumi feels like he has to be a sorcerer. And for that, I’m sorry. But I’m not going to let him become one unless I’m satisfied that he won’t get killed, fast or slow. So that’s my explanation. It’s no solution, but I suppose you can say I’m pleading guilty.”

Gojo-san ties off her twin braids and swings them over her shoulders. Then he draws away from her and folds his hands on his lap, as if awaiting her sentence. Gojo Satoru, the strongest sorcerer alive, awaits the verdict of Fushiguro Tsumiki, a teenage nobody.

Tsumiki thinks about Gojo-san at the fence of his estate, quietly admitting the first decision he and Megumi had made behind her back. Why did Megumi decide his future so easily for his step-sister he’d known for not even one year? Why did Gojo-san seek Megumi out in the first place, and why did he look after him with his effortlessly watchful eyes for the decade since?

If you’re a single, individual person, maybe selfishness is living without thinking about other people. But people aren’t single individuals. They’re connected to everyone around them. They’re unhappy when they are alone and happy when they are loved. What’s real selfishness if not wanting to have loved ones close to you? And what’s that if not selflessness?

Selfishness; selflessness. The line blurs to Tsumiki. It just looks like everybody is chasing love.

“I’ve told Megumi before that his unforgiving side is part of his kindness. Well, it was more like I was rationalizing it to myself,” she settles on saying. “He’s unforgiving because he’s steadfast, and because he’s steadfast he is also loyal. And that loyalty is something I really cherish about Megumi. Do you see what I mean?”

“Sure. Megumi is Megumi because he’s Megumi.”

“In that way, your selfishness is part of your kindness. You want a future where you’re not alone, and you want a future where young sorcerers are safe. You save children, they owe you their lives. Those are all two sides of the same action. But at least with Megumi, you both see opposite sides. You see the saving. He sees the debt. You see the future. He sees a value that he has to uphold.”

“I don’t think anyone has to uphold anything. That’s kind of my whole thing. I want the kids to be happy.”

“Sure, but you tell them to do that by following you and becoming good sorcerers. Because what else is there to happiness other than being a strong sorcerer, right?”

“Look, for me, there isn’t anything else.” Gojo-san sighs quietly, and there’s a rattle to it, something barely constrained. “There isn’t any other way.”

You keep telling yourself that, Tsumiki wants to say, but to be honest, she can’t presume to understand Gojo-san. It’s certainly true that no one can handle the missions he can. If Megumi were to shoulder some of that burden, maybe Gojo-san’s life would be easier. Maybe to Gojo-san, that is the only burden that matters to share. She can’t bring herself to believe it, though, looking in the mirror at the lovely braids he’s woven out of her hair. But it’s not her decision to make. It’s not her judgement to believe.

Selfishness; selflessness. Tsumiki, for one, has never had any illusions about what it is she’s chasing.

--

In time, it’s Megumi who comes to her. For all her so-called naivete, Tsumiki quietly goes about her business for three days and it’s Megumi who approaches her when she comes back from school.

“I watched someone die,” Megumi says without preamble. “Two months ago.”

“I see,” says Tsumiki, although she really does not.

“On a mission. I was just shadowing. It wasn’t supposed to -- the missions Gojo-sensei gives me are always stupid dummy missions. But this one turned out to be serious. I was… fine. Everything’s fine. But I feel distant. From you. From who I was before. It’s hitting me now. Who I have to become.”

You don’t have to become anyone, Tsumiki imagines pleading. Instead, she just nods.

“So, that’s my explanation, but I know it’s not an excuse. I still don’t agree with you,” Megumi continues. “I’m still mad that you interfered and asked Gojo-sensei to talk to me. But I said some awful things to you. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think I forgive you,” Tsumiki says.

Megumi smiles at that, and it’s a real smile, faint as it is. “I understand.”

And because it’s the moment for honesty, Tsumiki says, “I’ve been thinking about becoming a window. Maybe even during high school.”

The smile drops right off Megumi’s face. “What?”

“Gojo-san brought up the idea to me when we visited the Gojo house. I can understand these things, even if I can’t perform them. In fact, understanding them makes me feel better about you becoming a sorcerer. If it’s not unfamiliar magic -- if it’s something I can actually formulate and interface with -- I can even protect you.”

“I just told you I watched someone die,” Megumi says. “And yet you still, out of choice, want to be in this world.”

“Choice or not, I am in your world. I’ve been shut out of it -- you shut me out of it. But turns out there’s something I can actually do. I want to be a window.” Tsumiki reaches for Megumi’s hand; it tenses in her grip. “So you can talk to me, Megumi, and we can work together. I’m not incapable of understanding you. Even the violent parts. Even the ugly parts.”

“That’s not… I was supposed to protect you from exactly this.”

“Thank you for protecting me. But I care about you more than I am willing to let you play-act the hero. If protecting me means keeping me at arm’s length, then it’s not something I can allow.”

Megumi says nothing, but exhales a measured sigh. Maybe he’s coming to terms, or maybe he is steeling himself to continue shutting her out. Tsumiki won’t know until she does. But this is Megumi, her family, who once held her in the kitchen when they were freshly-abandoned children. She trusts that that boy is still inside him somewhere. She can’t make him reach for her like he did back then. She will only lay out her heart, plain and simple.

“Things will be alright,” she tells him. “Maybe that’s what you’d call lip service. But I think that everything will be alright.”

---

A strange man catches Tsumiki’s eye as she turns away from her friends on the way home from school. Tsumiki ignores him, because it’s common sense. Still, he sidesteps so that he blocks her path.

“Hi.” He smiles, and though his face is kind there’s something chilling about it. “Fushiguro Tsumiki.”

Tsumiki wonders if she should call the police. Though nothing warrants it yet, she is instinctually certain that this man brings danger. What she should do is text Gojo-san, but the thought of bothering him for something as simple as this is a bit embarrassing. Not that he’d mind. Or at the least, he’d pretend not to mind even if it cost some innocent soul he was supposed to be saving their life.

“Do I know you?”

“I should hope not,” he says. “I’m a sorcerer. You can call me Kenjaku. And that’s a privilege, because not many know that name.”

“I should hope not,” he says. “You can call me Kenjaku. And that’s a privilege, because not many know that name.”

Tsumiki, in theory, is not able to sense cursed energy. But she has spent her whole life around Megumi and Gojo-san, and maybe that has attuned some part of her to the intangible force that makes them superhuman. She senses it, too, in this stranger. Kenjaku is a sorcerer, and he has come for Tsumiki, which means --

“I don’t know where Megumi is,” she says flatly, the lie she’s practiced in case this precise event occurs. “You can’t use me as a hostage. He hates me, we aren’t close.”

“Sure he does,” Kenjaku says lightly. “Anyway, it’s not Megumi I’m after.”

“I don’t know where Gojo-san is either.”

“Well, I’m not here for him either. Tell me, Fushiguro Tsumiki. You must have always wanted to be a sorcerer.”

“Of course not. I’ve seen what it made Megumi into. What it did to Gojo-san.”

“Sure you do,” he says with that same kindly disbelieving air. “That’s too bad. It might make your future a bit more pleasant.”

He seems to move slowly, but before Tsumiki can flinch, he touches the crown of her head. For a moment, everything is still. Nothing has changed.

“It takes a moment. You should probably sit down, otherwise the fall might bruise you.”

Tsumiki touches her head, but her hand comes away intact. Her mind is a sea of scattered thoughts. She’s scared; she wishes Gojo-san was here. She wishes Megumi was here.

Tsumiki feels a coolness spreading down her back, as if Kenjaku had poured water down her shirt.

“What did you do to me?” Tsumiki tries to sound brave, but her trembling voice betrays her. “I’ll -- you know who I am. Gojo… Gojo Satoru is my legal guardian.”

“You go ahead and call him. I want you safe anyway.” Kenjaku gets to his feet, stretches. “Good night, Fushiguro Tsumiki.”

Before she can think better -- before she can wonder, is this overreacting -- she dials Gojo-san. Something is wrong, she knows it. The water spreads through her limbs.

Miraculously, he picks up on the second ring. “Tsumiki?” he asks, offhand, a bit surprised. She doesn’t usually call without warning.

“Can you come get me?” she manages.

“What happened?” Gojo-san says, razor sharp. “Actually, forget that. Tell me where you are.”

“School. The park nearest to the school.” Tsumiki isn’t sure how much of what she intends to say is getting said. Her brain is flooding with water. There is salt on her tongue. “I’m sorry. I’m really sleepy.”

“Don’t sleep. Tsumiki, don’t sleep. I’m coming to get you.”

She has never heard Gojo-san sound so afraid in her life. Except maybe the time she told him that Megumi owed him his life. Tsumiki owes Megumi her life. She owes Gojo-san her life. Is that what this is? Is she paying her debt, the same way Megumi and Gojo-san have sacrificed their lives to the path of the sorcerer?

“Megumi. Can you tell him I love him? Make sure of that. And you too, Gojo-san. Do you know that? Do you know that I love you?”

Silence echoes back at her. Gojo-san must have hung up. He’s coming to get her, but he will be too late. Tsumiki’s lungs are full of water.

---

Gojo-sensei materializes in the living room. Megumi is so startled that he drops the glass of water he was holding. But he doesn’t move to clean it up because he glances once at Gojo-sensei’s face and his body goes cold.

“You need to come with me now,” Gojo-sensei says. “Tsumiki was cursed.”

Megumi stumbles forward, broken glass sinking into his skin.

After the tests, and the searching, and the consolidation of similar events across the country, there is this: Tsumiki breathing evenly on a hospital bed. A mark on her forehead emanating a faint cursed energy that no one can lift. Doctors have assured him that they will figure this out, but the real answer lies in the defeat in Ieiri-sensei’s eyes after she tries every healing technique five times over. The real answer lies in Gojo-sensei burying his head in his hands, in this briefest loss of composure before he stands up, announces that he’s going out to search again, and then disappears.

Megumi has never gone where Tsumiki could not follow. No, she has followed him through his pain, through his anger, through his rejection of the kindness she offered. No, it is Tsumiki who has gone where he cannot follow, into some dream he cannot know. Or maybe it is a dreamless sleep. Or maybe it is horribly painful, in the place Megumi cannot go, and he has no way of knowing.

Night and day pass in the twin spills of light rotating through the panel of Tsumiki’s hospital room window. Time is only broken when Gojo-sensei appears in front of him. Megumi is slumped against the ruins of the public pool again, sprayed with Terashima’s blood, looking up into Gojo-sensei’s unmoved face. Stand up.

Today, Gojo-sensei does not ask such impossibilities of him. He just cups Megumi’s cheek in his palm, still cold from the early-morning chill.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IV. RITUALISM

After four days of hospital room vigil, it’s clear that nothing is fixing Tsumiki unless they exorcise whatever marked her. Ieiri-sensei recommends that Tsumiki be transferred to a long-term care facility and Megumi watches her stretcher disappear into another set of whitewashed walls. Gojo-sensei takes Megumi home. He has no words of comfort, for which Megumi is thankful, because there is nothing he would like to hear less than Gojo-sensei’s blasé optimism right now.

Tsumiki once told Megumi her hypothesis that Gojo-sensei had taken custody of them solely for the fun parts. Megumi found himself agreeing: he could not for the life of him imagine Gojo-sensei coming to their aid in a moment of real distress. He would never dream of telling him his school crushes or his bad dreams, although he never experienced either (definitely not). Now, here Megumi is, in a moment of real distress, and he half-expects Gojo-sensei to just tell him to text when he’s ready to train again.

When Megumi wakes up, he doesn’t sense Gojo-sensei’s cursed energy in the apartment. So he’s alone. Every second he spends awake, he’s crushed further under the weight of all he will have to do alone now: pack his lunch, go to school. Eat dinner. Do laundry. The mundane activities of his life were always mirrored by Tsumiki, whether or not they were talking that week, whether or not her every word irritated him. He can’t even fucking remember what the last thing he said to her was. Knowing him, it was probably dismissive and cruel.

Megumi’s spent enough seconds awake today. He swallows a few melatonin and for now, it proves enough. He sleeps through the rest of the day. When he wakes up, he immediately wants to be asleep again. He wanders into the kitchen to fish around for the sleeping pills he’d taken (and hidden from Tsumiki) for the first few weeks after Terashima’s death. When he goes to get water, he finds a sticky-note pasted on the fridge. It’s damningly similar to the notes Tsumiki leaves on their lunch boxes and Tupperware telling him what’s what and when things would expire. But this note is written in Gojo-sensei’s scrawl:

A week of dinners are in the freezer. Three more in the fridge. I don’t care if you skip all your other meals, but eat those.

I’m traveling for work. I’ll drop by in a week or two.

Text me twice a week to tell me you’re alive.

Megumi stares at the note for a long time. There’s no stupid Gojo-sensei doodles on it. The implication in the terse writing is clear: stand up, keep moving. Life doesn’t stop when your sister falls asleep. But these instructions are not insurmountable tasks. If Megumi follows them, he can show Gojo-sensei he’s alright, and that will make Megumi alright. If Megumi fails to become alright, Gojo-sensei may start worrying about him, or maybe he won’t worry about him at all. In both cases, the careful balance of his last ten years may very well crumble.

Maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe he cares about you, Tsumiki told him just weeks ago. His fucking ear-Tsumiki. Asleep or awake, she tells him things he can’t afford to hear. He doesn’t want to find out if Gojo-sensei cares about him or not. He might not survive it.

Thank you for the food, he texts Gojo-sensei. I’m alive. Instantly, Gojo-sensei responds with a sticker of himself giving a thumbs-up. Then he sends an airplane emoji and goes dark. Megumi eats dinner. He doesn’t eat breakfast or lunch, because Gojo-sensei didn’t tell him to. He texts again three days later: I’m alive. Gojo-sensei responds two hours later with a picture of his dinner, which is seemingly at some izakaya. Megumi doesn’t respond.

He goes back to school the next day. If he keeps skipping, his teachers will call Gojo-sensei, and if he does anything except ignore the calls as he usually does, the careful balance of the last ten years may very well crumble. Three more days pass: I’m alive. After two more, Gojo-sensei appears in his apartment without notice. It’s late on a Wednesday night -- probably early on a Thursday -- and Megumi should be asleep, but he’s paying for sleeping through the last week with an insomnia that medication won’t beat. Despite the unbidden surge of relief that crashes through him at the sensation of Gojo-sensei’s cursed energy, he just glances up from where he’s camped out watching T.V. That’s what Megumi would normally do, and Megumi is trying to act as normal as possible.

Gojo-sensei takes off his bandages to readjust them. He pauses for a moment, surveying Megumi with his whole sight. For a man who seldom sleeps, Gojo-sensei never shows signs of exhaustion, but tonight he’s moving slower than normal and there are faint shadows under his eyes. Megumi knows Gojo-sensei took more time than he should have chasing Tsumiki’s curse, judging by the tense calls he overheard outside the hospital room, and he’s probably working double time to catch up now. Still, here he is, at three-fifteen on a Thursday morning.

“It’s late,” says Megumi. “You didn’t have to come.”

“I thought you’d be asleep. Just wanted to see if you’re alive.”

Megumi shrugs. Gojo-sensei doesn’t question it, just peers over Megumi’s shoulder at the T.V.

“Only you would watch documentaries at this hour,” he comments. There’s no over-the-top humiliation, no bid for Megumi’s attention in the form of irritation.

“They’re interesting.”

“I brought more food.” Gojo-sensei holds up a plastic bag. “Just convenience-store meals.”

Megumi blinks slowly at him. “This isn’t like you.”

“You think I’m incapable of sensitivity?” Gojo-sensei smiles vaguely.

Megumi stands up and takes the bag from him. He counts them out as he arranges them in the freezer: another week’s worth. He wouldn’t even call it sensitivity, this rare carefulness that Gojo-sensei is displaying. It’s caution. Gojo-sensei is treading lightly, which Megumi hates even more than his brashness, even more than his unyielding nonchalance. Gojo-sensei doesn’t know what to do about Megumi, and worse yet, he is actually thinking about it. This is definitely upending the careful balance of the last ten years.

“From now on, it’s fine.” Megumi closes the fridge. “There’s nothing here I can’t manage.”

“Sure,” says Gojo-sensei, still with that faint smile, that undecided smile. It’s like he doesn’t know how he should appear to Megumi. He hates that they’re talking around it. He hates that things haven’t gone back to normal and that they probably never will.

Megumi sighs harshly. “Look, she’s not dead. And life goes on. Right?”

He looks Gojo-sensei straight in the eye. Steadfast, resolute, like all the times he lied to Tsumiki’s face for his sake as much as her own. If Gojo-sensei believes it, then so can he.

“I like the attitude,” Gojo-sensei says, because of course he does. It’s his own attitude, after all.

“Keep texting me that you’re alive,” he adds, and then he’s gone.

---

Summer crawls closer and everyone is busy except Megumi. Gojo-sensei proposes that he stay at Jujutsu Tech for the summer break and because there’s no reason not to, Megumi agrees. These days, he no longer feels like he wants to be asleep all the time, but there’s still a lethargy that pulls at him, like the grief physically drains him. Maybe it does. He’s never asked anyone, never spoke to a counselor. He doesn’t know the first thing about grief except that it’s something you move past.

Megumi is not a sorcerer, and so Gojo-sensei flatly refuses to rank him or assign him jobs despite the fact that Megumi would certainly be useful during the summer rush. That has always been his clear-cut rule: Megumi can train and he can shadow others, but he is not a sorcerer. He doesn’t understand what the difference is. He’s eye-to-eye with the curses and the death all the same. So summer crawls over him, and Megumi sits in the empty training grounds while kids a year older than him bravely risk their lives.

Weeks before Tsumiki was cursed, Gojo-sensei handed him an ultimatum: Come back when you’ve decided what you want. Yet here he is, hovering in the background of Jujutsu Tech, as weak-minded as ever. Maybe Gojo-sensei is kindly offering him an extension. Maybe he’s meant to sit here and observe sorcerers until he himself concocts a reason to believe this is worthwhile. And if he doesn’t, he will walk away. There are no regulations on sorcery use, so Megumi could hunt Tsumiki’s curse full-time. He could throw away all those years Gojo-sensei spent honing him into his lackluster mini-me: thanks, but fuck you. I don’t want in on your shitty jujutsu society.

“Hey, Jujutsu Tech ghost.” It’s Zen’in Maki looming over him. He thought the first-years were on a job, but evidently not. “We need the training grounds.”

“Maki-san, don’t call him a ghost…”

This plea comes from Okkotsu Yuta, who actually has a ghost on his shoulder. Megumi blinks at Rika, the gruesome spirit haunting Okkotsu-senpai, and she bares a grin back at him. Okkotsu-senpai was apparently on the verge of suicide thanks to Rika’s curse when Gojo-sensei appeared and offered for him to join Jujutsu Tech. The illusion of choice is all too familiar. But unlike Megumi, Okkotsu-senpai adores Gojo-sensei, and Gojo-sensei adores Okkotsu-senpai. Yuta’s great, isn’t he? He might surpass me one day. Gojo-sensei told Megumi the other day. That was what Gojo-sensei kept telling Megumi until recently: you’ll surpass me one day. With Okkotsu-senpai here, Megumi’s role has been taken over by somebody with more drive and more competence. Maybe that’s why Gojo-sensei no longer seems to care if Megumi becomes a sorcerer. Since Tsumiki was cursed, he hasn’t offered Megumi a single mission to shadow, hasn’t swung by to train him, hasn’t watched him practice and offer sniping criticism. He hardly sees him except for his departing back as he heads off to the next job.

“Do you want to train with us?” Okkotsu-senpai offers, but Megumi is already halfway across the courtyard. He goes to an indoor training room and practices his hand-to-hand in the cool, dark air. He could quit today. Nothing is stopping him. Yet he moves through forms, rhythmic and purposeful, until the sun sets.

His phone goes off: it’s his alarm to text Gojo-sensei, who will still appear unwanted in Megumi’s room if he doesn’t confirm his continued existence twice a week. I’m alive, he types, and receives a picture of some countryside sunset in response.

Megumi could quit any day he wanted. But the summer crawls over him, and though he sleeps half of it away he also tames the snake shikigami, hones his cursed energy tracking until he can sense any of the Jujutsu Tech students by presence alone, and steadily pushes his energy output until he can sustain three shikigami at once. Megumi could quit any day, but he doesn’t, because what else is there?

Who are you, Fushiguro Megumi? What is it that you want?

Well, what else is there?

Megumi closes his eyes. Tsumiki smiles back at him, spouting platitudes, following him to the ends of the Earth. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. She sleeps, and he pretends to sleep, imitating her as he always has.

---

August passes like a mirage through Megumi’s body. Soon September’s cool hands will encircle his chest, and it will have been nine years since he looked up into the cut-and-pasted face of Gojo Satoru and gave his life away without hesitation. Megumi kind of respects and admires that child. He was so resolute. He would’ve scoffed at fourteen-year-old Megumi melting away in the summer heat.

If I go, will Tsumiki be happy? How simple it was back then. How easy it was to decide when the answer was so clear: Absolutely not. How simple it was to stake it all on her. How easy it is to live for the sake of others.

What is it that you want? What is it that you want? What is it that you —

There is nothing inside Megumi except the tarpit of his shadow, that drowns anything that comes too close, anything that demands to know what’s inside him. That’s why it was so easy to stake it all on Tsumiki. If he becomes a sorcerer, Tsumiki will be safe: a clean, easy reason to live that doesn’t demand anything from Megumi himself. Gojo-sensei gave him something to fulfill, and now he doesn’t know what else there is to hold onto. Now Tsumiki’s asleep, and there is nothing inside Megumi, and it’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not right.

What is it that he wants? Well, what else is there?

Megumi will be a sorcerer because there is nothing else to be. He will be a sorcerer for Tsumiki, and if he can’t do that, he’ll do it in her name. He’ll do it for anyone else who gives it meaning the same way she did.

---

Megumi walks into Tsumiki’s hospital room half-asleep, but starts wide awake when he finds that she’s not alone.

“Hi!”

Gojo-sensei grins widely at him. He’s not sitting down -- he was probably just passing through -- but it’s still so uncharacteristic of him to do something so unproductive as visit Tsumiki that Megumi finds himself searching for logical explanations.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, coming up with nothing.

“You know I do visit her occasionally,” Gojo-sensei says, which Megumi actually did not know at all.

“You never leave flowers or anything.”

He shrugs. “Those things are trivial and sentimental.”

Megumi brushes past him to clean out last week’s lavender and replace it with this week’s assortment of flower stalks. He picked them from the school gardens this morning. Inumaki-senpai, who somehow is the school’s informal gardener, found him and helped him out instead of chastising him in onigiri ingredients. Megumi wonders if Gojo-sensei told the students. No one has mentioned it to him, but they all treat him somewhat carefully, with kindness but not the over-familiarity they use with one another.

“Daisies and baby’s breath,” he says to Tsumiki. Gojo-sensei raises his eyebrows and Megumi explains, “I know she probably can’t hear me. But.” But he still prefers to pick the flowers carefully himself and then tell her about them, as if the effort of the gesture would prove to her that he was still there to watch over her. It’s the sort of thing she would do for him.

“We don’t know the first thing about her curse. She might be able to hear us. That’s why we only say nice things about you, Tsumiki,” Gojo-sensei addresses the last sentence to her and reaches out to pat her shoulder. Megumi is stunned by the warmth of the gesture. Every time he thinks he’s started to figure out Gojo-sensei, his view gets upended.

“Classes start again for you soon, right?” Gojo-sensei addresses Megumi. “When you’ve packed your things Ijichi will give you a ride home.”

Megumi nods, distantly surprised that he’s not looking forward to leaving the campus in a few days. For one, the claustrophobic evidence of Tsumiki and her absence in their Saitama apartment is difficult to live with. And chance encounters with Gojo-sensei like this will reduce to nothing once he goes home and slips back into the normal world.

“Well, I’ll head out, then.”

“Gojo-sensei,” Megumi stops him, just as he turns around. “I thought about it. What you said before Tsumiki was cursed. When you told me to figure out what I want.”

His thoughts are only half-formulated, but he doesn’t know when he’ll see Gojo-sensei again, and whatever clarity he has might dissolve when he returns to his solitary school-year existence. Gojo-sensei turns around and listens, arms crossed. Under the bandages his face is unreadable.

“I want to save people on my own terms,” he begins haltingly. “People like Tsumiki. Good people. Good people who are dealt misfortune. I want to correct that.”

“Hero of justice, hm?”

“No, not a hero. The opposite of a hero. I just want the power to save people myself. Instead of just watching the cards fall.”

“That’s a very Megumi reason.” Then he turns to Tsumiki. “Did you hear that, Tsumiki? Your little brother is growing up.”

---

Now that Megumi has pronounced his desire to be a sorcerer, Gojo-sensei begins taking him on missions again. As if to make up for lost time, they are somewhere different every other weekend: Nagoya, Osaka, Nara, where Megumi feeds the deer for the first time. Gojo-sensei even almost takes him to Okinawa but when the third-years step up he quickly relinquishes the job, which is annoying because Megumi would have kind of liked to go. Gojo-sensei is not the touchy-feely type -- Megumi would say he is utterly incapable of touching feelings -- but during these missions Megumi gathers that Gojo-sensei is glad to have him back; he’s glad Megumi chose to come back. Megumi doesn’t marinate on this feeling for too long because he’s afraid it will dissolve him.

Late November finds them in Sapporo, where the winter chill is well underway. Gojo-sensei makes quick work of the spirit terrorizing a small temple town and tasks Megumi with maintaining the curtain. Then they come to the likely reason Gojo-sensei took this job and carted Megumi along: a festival market overflowing with northern delicacies. Now that Megumi has pronounced his desire to be a sorcerer, they are back to having fun, it seems. He eats butter cookies and doesn’t complain.

Megumi is a sorcerer-to-be again, and Gojo-sensei returns to his life. Where were you, he doesn’t say, the whole summer? Where were you when I wasn’t your student anymore? But that would be unfair. The summer rush had certainly kept him busy. And Megumi texted Gojo-sensei twice weekly, after all (I’m alive), so there was no reason for Gojo-sensei to be there. It’s not that Megumi has only now become worthwhile again, he tells himself. That’s not the reason.

“Do you still think I can surpass you someday?” Megumi asks, against his better judgement.

“Of course I do.” There it is. Megumi needed that balming surety. “You are going to be an excellent sorcerer.”

“You’ve been patient with me,” Megumi says. “Thank you.”

“For what exactly?”

“Offering me the choice. Looking after me. Training me. All of it. I’ll work hard in return.”

Gojo-sensei frowns at this. “You know, there’s nothing you have to fulfill.”

“I know,” Megumi says, which is false. There is always something to fulfill. Maybe it’s not the contract anymore, but that is their relationship. That is where he belongs in respect to Gojo-sensei.

Gojo-sensei takes a butter cookie from Megumi, having finished all of his. He speaks quietly, and Megumi has to strain to hear him under the din of the festival:

“When it comes to whatever I did for you, to me, it’s about the future. To you, it’s about the value that you have to uphold. I think. I’m kind of paraphrasing someone here. I know I can’t make you unsee that. But I just wanted you to know that to me, it was never a question of value.”

He’s right; there is no unseeing it. There is no way that Megumi can see himself as anything but an investment to fulfill because Gojo-sensei didn’t acknowledge any other part of him. Even now, they are only standing together under the warm lamp of the festival stall in the context of the curse they just exorcised. But that wasn’t out of thoughtlessness or cruelty. It’s because Gojo-sensei simply doesn’t know how. There’s no other context in which to know him.

Becoming a sorcerer was never the problem. It’s just that with Gojo-sensei, that’s all that there is. The unsolvable problem is this: Megumi wants Gojo-sensei to be more than he is, despite his best efforts, despite his ten years of drawing lines.

“You said you were training me because you wanted a friend.”

“I did say that. It’s a bit reductive, and what I really --”

“What’s a friend for you, Gojo-sensei? What does that mean to you?”

“A strong sorcerer,” he answers easily, “who can stand beside me.”

And here is Megumi’s answer. This is Gojo-sensei, the person who drew the course of his life. This is Gojo-sensei, opaque and unsettling. Inhuman and superficial and dismissive and aloof. This is Gojo-sensei, utterly and immeasurably alone, and trying to fix it in the only fucked-up way he knows. But still. But still. Megumi can’t dismiss him. He can’t even hate him. Because Megumi is human, and his stupid, human heart still reaches.

---

Megumi’s fifteenth birthday passes alone. He’s been bracing for it, which is stupid; he should be old enough by now to stop placing weight on celebrating his birthday. But childishly, he has always enjoyed his birthday, even though it was only ever Tsumiki and Gojo-sensei who were present for it. It was one of the few rituals they engaged in year after year. It was an acceptable occasion on which Megumi could be given attention without feeling discomfort about it.

But this year, Tsumiki is asleep, and he vaguely understands that there is a huge sorcerer threat looming over Kyoto and Shinjuku in two days, so Gojo-sensei will be busy. Megumi offered more than once to fight, but just as always, Gojo-sensei refused him flatly.

So Megumi carries out this ritual occasion alone. He goes to school and visits Tsumiki. He gives her flowers for his birthday: peonies, drooping at the top with the weight of their blooms, an absolute pain to acquire at this time of year.

When he returns, ready to cook dinner and eat it while reading, Gojo-sensei is sitting at the kitchen table.

“Happy birthday.”

“What about the thousand parade night curse thing?”

Gojo-sensei shrugs loosely. “There’s nothing left to plan.”

“Hold on. I wasn’t expecting to see you until after the new year. One minute.” Megumi goes into his room, tosses things out of drawers for a few seconds, and emerges. “This is for you.”

Gojo-sensei takes the small paper bag from Megumi. “For what?”

“It was your birthday, too, in December.”

Gojo-sensei didn’t visit him for it; he never does. Megumi didn’t even know the date until Tsumiki told him in agitation, having failed to celebrate it the winter Megumi turned nine. Since then, it was always Tsumiki who presented Gojo-sensei with a token of gratitude and something sweet every year, which he accepted graciously but without his usual fanfare. With the eyes of hindsight and a little maturity, Megumi thinks that Gojo-sensei, for all his self-absorption, is uncomfortable with genuine attention. And with Tsumiki, every ounce of attention was genuine.

“Go on, open it,” he prompts.

He turns the black cloth over in his hands. “A blindfold,” he surmises. “Did you secretly measure my head in my sleep?”

“No, so I hope it fits.”

Gojo-sensei unravels his bandages. For a brief moment, their eyes meet. He looks so tired, maybe more so than Megumi has ever seen him, and he resists the urge to say so aloud. Gojo-sensei must be able to read the concern in his face, because he huffs a quiet laugh and tugs the blindfold over his eyes. It fits.

“Why this?” Gojo-sensei asks.

“I know you started wearing bandages because the glasses weren’t enough. But they seem so inconvenient. And not truly opaque. So.”

“You pay very close attention,” Gojo-sensei says quietly. “Thanks.”

“Yep,” Megumi responds, starting to feel uncomfortable. Something about the upcoming fight has Gojo-sensei on edge. His usual affectations are sloughing off like wax paper under water.

“Okay, now your turn.”

Megumi unravels the little package Gojo-sensei hands him. Lily bulbs.

“Sorry, it’s less for you and more for her. Plant them now and they’ll bloom by June.”

He must have been watching the way Megumi carefully selected flowers for her bedside. Gojo-sensei, always a surprise. Wielding a humanness of which Megumi always thought him incapable. Megumi can never completely write him off.

“I can fight,” Megumi finds himself saying instead of thank you. “Let me fight.”

“No can do,” Gojo-sensei snorts. “I’m not going to sic you against the worst threat to humankind in the last two decades before you’ve even matriculated.”

“If it’s the worst threat to humankind, then don’t you need all the help you can get?”

“Believe me, you’ll have your fair share of fights soon enough. If you’re so concerned about your utility, save it ‘til then.”

“But are you --” Megumi struggles to word it. He can’t ask are you okay, because that isn’t a question that sorcerers are allowed to ask. “You seem tired.”

Gojo-sensei is still for a long moment. “Yeah, I suppose I am.”

“So then can’t I help?”

“In this particular instance, I am beyond saving.” Gojo-sensei gets up. “Don’t leave the house tomorrow unless necessary. And under no circumstances will you come near Shinjuku. Do you understand?”

Megumi nods.

“I need to hear it, Megumi.”

“I understand.”

“Very good.” Gojo-sensei takes off the blindfold, and there he is again, facing Megumi. “I’m going to save this for the new year. Don’t want to get anything unsightly on it.”

“Will you let me know what happens?”

“I’ll make sure that someone does. See you, Megumi.”

And then he’s gone. Megumi turns over the lily bulbs in his hands. It’s time to play the waiting game, again. He knows that with Gojo-sensei, it will never be long, but he still hates the suspension. He's so tired of waiting. He's so tired of just watching the cards fall. But until he becomes a sorcerer, there is nothing he is able to control.

---

Ieiri-sensei calls briefly around one a.m. on Christmas Day to let him know that the battle is over and that there were no casualties he should know about. She hangs up before he can press her for details.

I’m alive, Megumi texts Gojo-sensei, after some hesitation. Are you?

He knows Gojo-sensei is alive and that, in all likelihood, he’s unharmed. But that isn’t what he’s asking. That was never what Gojo-sensei was asking Megumi, either.

Megumi goes to sleep. He wakes up. He isn’t tense, not now that he knows that everyone made it out okay, and so he spends his Christmas in quiet solitude. He makes himself breakfast: pancakes and fresh whipped cream, the indulgent American food Tsumiki liked to eat on Christmas day as some bastardization of the holiday spirit. He takes his dogs out on a walk for no reason. He visits Tsumiki with a bouquet of red roses and fragrant pine cuttings. He sits there for several hours, thinking about nothing, watching the sun cast long shadows through the panel of her hospital room window.

And as the sun begins to sink below the horizon, Gojo-sensei finally responds to him: I’m alive.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

V. SELFISHNESS

In April, Megumi is inaugurated into the first-year class at Jujutsu Tech. It is exactly how he imagined it his entire life, except for the fact that he tells Tsumiki about his first day at her bedside instead of in their apartment in Saitama that weekend. Instead, he spends his first weekend wandering through the empty dorms on his own, dusting off the appliances, and making simple meals. He has slowly learned to cook over the last year. It is on the growing list of things he is sorry he never had the presence of thought to do before Tsumiki was cursed. Now he brings her flowers and tries his hardest to think about other people more.

Since Megumi’s first-year teacher is none other than Gojo-sensei, nothing much changes about his sorcery life except his living quarters. In fact, he likes it much more than his unbearably solitary existence in Saitama. The second-years take him in easily; he slots into Okkotsu-senpai’s place despite the fact that he’s much weaker. He does well without being remarkable. He ranks easily as a Grade 2 upon entry and Gojo-sensei takes him to dinner to celebrate, even though Okkotsu-senpai ranked as special on his first day.

Megumi does well without living up to his potential, but Gojo-sensei doesn’t seem to care about it much at all. He’s probably just happy to see Megumi adjusting. Or he’s just happier when he’s at school teaching than when he was checking in with Megumi during his childhood. It’s always hard to tell with Gojo-sensei, and it’s even harder to tell since Tsumiki. In a way, the last year has split them apart, driving them down opposite roads of loss. In other ways, it has given them an unspoken understanding of one another. Megumi understands not just how he fails to live up to Gojo-sensei’s expectations, but also how Gojo-sensei fails to live up to his. And having acknowledged the gap, it’s starting to feel livable.

In June, Megumi meets Itadori Yuji. More accurately, he swallows a special-grade curse and saves Megumi’s life.

“What shall we do with him?” asks Gojo-sensei.

And though he says it like he’s asking where to eat for dinner, it’s another of his Gojo-sensei ways of trying to put his trust in Megumi, trying to say it’s your future, it’s your world, in the Gojo-sensei language Megumi has only recently begun to understand.

Megumi takes that trust and answers it. Just like every other immense decision he has ever made, it is immensely easy. He takes Itadori’s life into his hands, the blood he may draw, and the lives he may end. He takes it all, because Itadori is a good person, and Megumi swore to protect good people.

In June, Itadori Yuji and Kugisaki Nobara join Jujutsu Tech and the first-year class triples in size. At first, he wasn’t too sure they would last. Gojo-sensei said as much as they observed Itadori and Kugisaki during their first Tokyo job: these two were raw. They hadn’t yet held their own against the Tokyo curses, the concoction of greed, jealousy, and desire that grew so easily out of the city’s inhabitants. But they last, at least for a little bit. They live past that first mission and they all go out to eat ramen. Megumi stays quiet while the other three chatter away, just like when he was a child and Tsumiki and Gojo-sensei would trade banter while Megumi quietly went in on his dinner. It’s not as familiar, but it still feels warm.

Itadori and Kugisaki live past their first mission. They live long enough for Megumi to acclimate to their personalities, to begin to predict the ways they’ll interrupt class and the times of night they are the most likely to knock on Megumi’s door. He participates in a few activities he never thought he would be caught dead or alive performing, such as karaoke and truth or dare. They live just long enough for Megumi to start to imagine a first-year class like the second-years: camaraderie, support. Friendship, though Megumi barely lets himself taste the word, let alone say it out loud.

Then, Itadori dies. Itadori dies because life is singularly unfortunate to the good. Itadori dies by pulling his own heart out of his chest because Megumi told him that he’s glad he saved his life. In other words, he dies by Megumi’s doing, the first and only of the blood he took the responsibility of bearing.

Itadori dies. Gojo-sensei goes to Africa on a business trip. Life goes on.

After two weeks pass, Megumi has known Itadori as dead longer than alive. Megumi spends most of his days getting tossed around by Maki. The desperation to get stronger is jolted deeper into his chest every time the words live a long life flash through his mind, along with the disembodied fragments of the memory he’s mostly blocked out by now: a heart clutched in a fist, a faint smile, rain pooling in the corners of unseeing eyes.

Ieiri-sensei calls him and Kugisaki down to her office that day, on the two-week anniversary. She makes them fill out a questionnaire and then takes them in individually. Megumi sits up straight and looks Ieri-sensei right in the eyes, even though the act of meeting her flat stare makes him want to slouch out of existence. It’s important for him to prove that he is fine, because he is fine.

“Well, you seem fine.” Megumi thinks he should have put down a few more traumatized answers, because Ieri-sensei looks pretty doubtful as she flips through his questionnaire. “Well, I suppose you didn’t know him for very long, did you?”

Megumi shakes his head. The less he says, the faster he can get out of here.

“So how are you feeling?”

Ieiri-sensei sounds disinterested as always when she asks it, clicking her pen absently, but Megumi catches a sharpness that tells him she’s onto him. The question alone is enough indication: sorcerers don’t ask each other how they are without some underlying reason.

“I’m fine.” Ieiri-sensei quirks an eyebrow at him and he stifles a sigh before trying to choke up some bullshit. “I think I was fairly disturbed by the gruesomeness of it for a few days. But like you said, I didn’t know him that well.”

Megumi has been saying iterations of the phrase to everyone who’s asked. I had hardly met him. I didn’t really know him. We weren’t friends. It’s a logical statement. Megumi and Itadori had been in each other’s proximity for not even two weeks, and him ripping his heart out of his chest and telling Megumi to live a long life was just losing an acquaintance. Megumi seeing him and seeing good was just him projecting all his unresolved feelings about Tsumiki onto another sunny-smiling face.

“Fushiguro.” Ieiri-sensei raps her pen sharply on her clipboard and Megumi jumps to attention. “Zoning out, are you?”

Megumi tries to remember if that was one of the questions on the questionnaire. “No, I was just thinking … about, um. Gojo-sensei. When he’ll be back.”

“He’s been avoiding you, has he? Emotionally stunted asshole.”

“Isn’t he overseas?”

Ieiri-sensei clicks her tongue and he swears she rolls her eyes the slightest bit. “That he is. He could stand to give you a call, though.”

“I don’t need a call.” Megumi feels like he’s eight years old and Gojo-sensei is peeling off his bandages to look at him with his whole sight. “I’m fine.”

“Certainly. You’re free to go.”

Megumi wants to assert his fineness some more, because it really seems like Ieiri-sensei isn’t buying it, but he’s not about to let this opportunity slip. He’s just getting up when Ieiri-sensei hands his questionnaire back to him. She’s re-circled a bunch of his answers, horrifyingly accurately, too. It takes all he has to not crumple it on instinct.

“It’s just my guess. But I’m good at guessing. You learn some things by cheating your way through medical school.” Ieiri-sensei eyes him with that unsettlingly unreadable pitch-dark gaze. “It’s interesting that jujutsu sorcerers themselves are often the worst at grappling with the emotions that breed curses in the first place. Philosophical, isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m --”

“The finest kid on the planet, I know.”

Megumi swallows his words. And he thought he’d gotten away with it, too.

“A word of advice. The more you box up and pack away, the more comes springing out at you in the least convenient moments. There’s no easy way out of grief.”

He shouldn’t be grieving. We weren’t even friends. But they were -- friends, maybe, Megumi doesn’t really know friends, but they were something. And he is grieving. No matter what he tells everyone who bothers to ask, he feels Itadori’s absence so keenly he may well be living in Megumi’s shadow.

“Okay.” His voice comes out uncomfortably gravelly. “I’ll get going, then.”

Megumi gets going. He bypasses the training grounds and goes to the baseball field. The sand is muddy and the grass is long overgrown; he wonders whose inane idea it was to put sports fields on the campus of a high school for a bunch of overworked teenage sorcerers. Maybe it’s a relic from a time when teenage sorcerers weren’t overworked, or better yet, weren’t killed in cold-blooded set-ups. If such a time ever existed.

Megumi closes his eyes and imagines looking down into the eye of death. He imagines, instead of Terahima’s exploded neck in the public pool, it’s Itadori lying there with his heart in his hand. He inhales, exhales, and summons the Max Elephant.

There is no one to watch over him; no one on campus could save him if this goes awry. Gojo-sensei will not appear at the brink of his death and wave it all away. Not today, not anymore. Megumi is a Jujutsu Tech sorcerer now and this is the weight he must bear. There’s no easy way out of grief, but there is this: avengement, penance. And for this, Megumi will do whatever it takes.

---

Half an hour later, Megumi returns to Ieiri-sensei’s office with the last of his conscious energy. She doesn’t ask and doesn’t criticize him. She just seals the fractures in his bones and the lacerations running up and down his back. And just like that, it’s done. He has one more shikigami. He almost wants to tame another, because the elephant doesn’t feel like enough; the open maw in his stomach is barely sated. But he can already feel the bone-deep lethargy that he recognizes as the aftereffect of healing setting in. The last time he felt it was back when Gojo-sensei hit him too hard last year and broke a quarter of his bones. Gojo-sensei took him home and even carried him to bed, his whole fourteen-year-old body. At the time he’d barely registered the enormity of that gesture, the care it implied. Now he feels its absence so keenly. Gojo-sensei will not appear to wave it all away. Megumi is a sorcerer now: this what Gojo-sensei has been training him to endure all along.

“You’ve learned from your teacher,” she says to his back when he stands to leave. “It was at about your age that I did this for him for the first time. I’m not sure how much has changed since then, despite all his lofty ideals.”

Megumi doesn’t know the first thing about Gojo-sensei’s lofty ideals, and he doesn’t care. He gets the sense that Ieiri-sensei is talking more to herself than him, anyway. All he knows is that he needs to sleep and wake up again.

Megumi has to get up early, eat all his meals, and sleep on time. It doesn’t matter that when he closes his eyes he only sees Itadori grinning back at him. He wakes up when his alarm rings all the same.

---

As a rule, Megumi doesn’t initiate conversation with anyone, but Maki-senpai forces him to break this rule. Her stamina is too damn good, and she’d spar till Megumi dropped dead if she could. Because Megumi would rather drop dead than admit this, his verge-of-death tactic is to occasionally ask her about her personal life.

“You have a sister, right?” he forces out as evenly as he can when Maki-senpai knocks him flat on his ass for the dozenth time that day. “I met you guys once.”

Maki-senpai glares down at him. Normally, he doesn’t bring up Zen’in clan drama, because the last thing he wants is for Maki-senpai to think he’s interested in joining her crusade. He’s not a Zen’in, by a very deliberate choice, and he’d like to keep that distinction.

He met the twins for the first and only time in his life when Gojo-sensei took him to the Zen’in clan to broker the custody transfer. He looked at the twins in their frightened eyes, then one tugged the other away at the sight of an older boy crossing the courtyard. That day, without needing further explanation, he understood that Gojo-sensei hadn’t been lying at all when he said that there was absolutely no way Tsumiki would be happy here.

“I remember that. The old guys were so fucking mad that Satoru got ahold of you that I figured that joining his side was a good bet for pissing off the clan. That’s why I chose Tokyo.” Maki-senpai pulls Megumi to his feet by the arm of his staff. “Mai chose Kyoto. So you’ll meet her in a few weeks at the exchange event.”

“You want to become the Zen’in clan head. What about Mai? If you both want the same thing, aren’t you competing?”

Maki scoffs. “Mai doesn’t have any real aspirations. I don’t even know why she became a sorcerer. She doesn’t want change. Maybe she’s fine with the way things were for us. Or she’s too weak to fight it. Well, whatever. I know who I am and I know that I need to get out of that shithole. Nothing else matters until I can do that.”

“You’re a bit like Gojo-sensei,” he says without thinking it through. Luckily, Maki-senpai doesn’t question it much.

“Really? That’s good, because he’s strong.”

“Yeah, in some way that’s what I mean. You both… make the universe bend to your will.”

“I’d love it if I could do that. Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know what I’d do if I could.”

“Whatever the fuck you want!” Maki throws her hands in the air. “Destroy everything. Become king of the world. Kill every asshole you see. You must want something, anything.”

Megumi thinks, and thinks. Somehow the only image he can come up with is a clothesline hanging laundry. Reorganizing his bookshelf. A bowl of fresh, clean-tasting, spicy soup.

“I only want the absence of things,” he admits. “The absence of fear. The absence of guilt. The absence of obligation.”

Maki barks a short laugh. “It doesn’t sound like you’ll be a very happy sorcerer.”

“I know. But I just don’t want anything for myself — I never have. I only want to take care of the few people around me. And to do that, I need to be a sorcerer.”

“Your Sleeping Beauty sister?”

Megumi nods. Maki-senpai was a first-year when Tsumiki was cursed, and although he never spoke to her for long enough that he told her about his situation, the students must have heard it through the grapevine.

“Do all the second-years know?” he asks.

“Yeah. Satoru mentioned it pretty casually. ‘That depressed kid, let him off easy, he’s here ‘cause his sister was cursed.’”

“I didn’t need to be let off easy.”

“Well, it’s why we mostly left you alone. Not sure if that’s what you wanted or not.”

The name of the game seems to be not knowing what Megumi wants, Megumi himself included.

“It seems like you and Mai are pretty independent from one another,” he continues, although he’s mostly caught his breath. “You make your choices independent of her. You guys don’t owe each other anything. That was never the case for me and Tsumiki. Now it’s murky. I’m not sure what it means to live for the sake of others.”

More like, he doesn’t know how to live for the sake of others anymore. They keep falling asleep and dying, and he doesn’t know how many more times he can choose a reason to live like he’s nominating a champion for his soul.

“Well, I’m the wrong person to ask.” Maki-senpai hefts Playful Cloud in her hands. “Come on, enough talking. Give it a bit more grit this time.”

And Megumi tries, as he always does. He tries to fight and win. He tries to want it more.

Live a long life, Itadori’s voice whispers in his ear. What damning last words.

---

After all this moping, Itadori turns out not to be dead. Seeing his body pop out of that inane cardboard box, Megumi’s stomach cycles through shock, soaring relief, and then a curdling resentment that he’s ashamed to even feel. He pushes it down, though, because there is work to be done.

When all is said and done with the exchange event, Gojo-sensei lets himself into Megumi’s bedroom and sts in one of the folding chairs in Megumi’s room where Kugisaki and Itadori had been chowing down pizza a half hour earlier. It’s far too small for Gojo-sensei’s height and his knees fold up comically.

Megumi sticks a bookmark in his book and sets it aside. Might as well get down to business and finish this conversation as soon as possible. “You told Itadori not to say anything, right? About him surviving?”

“Of course. So if you’re gonna get mad, I guess I should be the target.” He adds, “I really did go abroad, you know.”

“Someone needed you so critically for exactly the last six weeks?”

“Someone always needs me. But you’re right, I was taking advantage of the convenient timing. I didn’t want to lie to your face, so I lied to you secondhand.”

“You didn’t have to. I can keep secrets.”

“The higher-ups have eyes even here. How do you think you three ended up planted in that death trap to begin with?”

“Whatever. It’s fine.” And it really is; Megumi has nothing left to say. He does see why Gojo-sensei did what he did. It makes perfect sense given Megumi’s understanding of Gojo-sensei, and given how Gojo-sensei understands the world. The long-term benefit is maximized in this scenario.

“I thought this might happen,” Gojo-sensei says curtly. “You get along with Itadori, you’re friends. Of course I thought it would affect you.”

“Yet you went to Africa.” He didn’t even check in on Megumi, not once. He just took Itadori’s corpse from Megumi at the morgue, briskly told him to go wash up, and here they are two months later.

“What could I have done for you?” Megumi looks up at Gojo-sensei. The simplicity to his voice -- no brashness, no sarcasm -- is startling. For once in a handful of times in his life, Gojo-sensei is being honest. “Really, what is it that I could have done for you?”

Megumi considers this. Finally, he says, “You could have patted my head.”

Gojo-sensei laughs. But some part of Megumi is perfectly serious. Gojo-sensei reaches over and roughly grabs Megumi’s scalp, and some part of Megumi really, really, needs it. But he doesn’t say this to Gojo-sensei, because he doesn’t know how to make him understand. He just leans into the brief touch.

“Itadori’s gotten strong,” he says to Gojo-sensei. “Would you train me sometime?”

And because this is a language Gojo-sensei does understand, he beams ear to ear.

---

Since starting high school, Megumi has been thinking more about what Gojo-sensei said when Megumi asked why he was training him. I wanted a friend. Since Itadori was reanimated, Megumi has begun to realize what it means to have a friend. It’s having two idiots who will follow you on your rogue mission to defuse the time bomb on your comatose sister. It’s having them shoulder the burden when unexpected curses pop out of the ground, so that it’s easy for you to stand your ground, for you to give it your all. It’s believing enough in them and yourself that you don’t realize that you’re in too deep until a Special Grade curse is leering into your blurry vision.

When you die, you will always be alone, Gojo-sensei told him when they were training, when he told Megumi that he was too much of a team player. Ironic, for Megumi who has trained and fought alone for his whole life. Maybe he’s started to like his friends a little too much.

Megumi is alone, and Megumi is going to die.

Blood pools on his tongue. Through the lights bursting in his vision, he vaguely perceives the Special Grade lumbering towards him. Hardly conscious, Megumi brings his hands into the shape he studied from all angles on the floor of the Gojo household’s inner library. He makes the gesture he has practiced before, silently, tentatively, wondering at the power it holds. The escape it would bring -- to know that he did all he could, that he gave his life for the sake of others. If whispering this summons could exchange his life for Tsumiki’s, he would have done so the moment she was cursed. At least now, he will exchange his life for those of his classmates. Two for the price of one: two kind souls in exchange for his own exhausted one.

He feels the sharp flick of Gojo-sensei’s finger on his forehead. Give it your all. It’s okay to be selfish!

Selfish. What does that word even mean? What can it mean to Megumi, who has never had the choice to want anything for himself at all?

Megumi imagines Tsumiki waking up. Tomorrow, in ten years, it doesn’t matter. She wakes up and he isn’t there, because he exchanged two kind souls for his own exhausted one. She grieves for him, but she understands his sacrifice. She understands the path of the sorcerer. But Megumi doesn’t get to see her wake up, because he is all potential and no fucking action.

Who are you, Fushiguro Megumi?

Megumi doesn’t let himself think of an answer.

Selfish. Give it your all. Selfish. Self. Self. Like Gojo-sensei, he needs a self so strong he bends the universe around him. Selfish. Selfish. Selfish. The world is only Megumi. He is the most important thing in the world.

And then he feels it, fueled by his desperation and catalyzed by the single-minded chant in his head: be selfish, be selfish, be selfish. That bright core of limitless inspiration that stops time, and motion, and lets him do anything.

Everything in your life lies within a boundary, Megumi, that only you believe exists.

Megumi surpasses his limits, and he fucking loves it.

---

Gojo-sensei appears in the common room of the first-year dorms the morning that they’re scheduled to go on their next job with Utahime-sensei. Megumi has just made himself a cup of coffee and at Gojo-sensei’s stupid puppy eyes, sets about making another. Maybe Gojo-sensei is tired recently; yesterday the first-years walked in on him asleep in his chair when they met to debrief the new job.

“Itadori and Kugisaki aren’t up yet,” he says. “Also, I’m not sure we have enough sugar for your taste.”

“That’s okay. They already told me about their fight. A double back flash -- makes me a proud teacher.” He drapes himself over the countertop. “I heard about your Sukuna finger from Akari, though. This isn’t the sort of thing I should find out secondhand. I want a phone call about it right away, bragging your ass off.”

“Well, you will have to live with the disappointment, then.” Megumi turns over the words in his mouth, and then says, “I opened my domain.”

Gojo-sensei’s mouth drops open a little bit. “Huh?”

“It was crappy and incomplete. There was no barrier and I didn’t have a guaranteed hit. But it was a domain.”

“What was it like?” he asks with unabashed curiosity.

“Sticky and pitch-black,” says Megumi, which doesn’t quite do it justice. “I could manipulate my shadow better. My dogs were stronger. I didn’t imagine it very precisely.”

“The first time you perform a Domain Expansion it’s always roughly conceived. So how’d you do it?”

“Um, by imagining it and casting it.” By following Gojo-sensei’s advice, though he’s not about to give him that ego boost.

“Let me rephrase. How’d you get the guts to try?”

“I just gave it a shot for the hell of it,” Megumi summarizes quite reductively. But since he himself can hardly grasp what it is that motivated him to drop the summoning and risk it all on his domain, he isn’t about to attempt to explain it to Gojo-sensei.

“Hm. I was almost in my third year when I opened my domain for the first time.” Gojo-sensei smiles broadly. “Good job, Megumi.”

And for once, he sounds completely sincere. For once, Megumi isn’t left lacking, the disappointing prodigy. But the praise doesn’t spark an ounce of excitement. He tries to reach for that bright core of possibility, the thrill and fervor that fueled his Domain Expansion, but it feels like a dream. Something that could have only happened to another version of him.

“That was probably the first time I really loved sorcery,” he admits to Gojo-sensei. “I felt guilty.”

Gojo-sensei nods. Megumi doesn’t need to elaborate for him to understand.

“Unfortunately, you will never be strong enough to protect others if you can’t actualize your sorcery as sharply as possible. And you need to love sorcery to do that. You need to love sorcery, and forget everything else.”

“But the reason I do this is for other people.”

“Sure. But you are powerful. And you can bask in that. You can be self-absorbed. Your technique contains infinite possibility -- it’s okay to admire that.”

“I don’t… want to admire it. I don’t want to admire myself.”

“Of course not. You don’t like yourself enough to do that,” Gojo-sensei says candidly.

“And you do, obviously.”

“Obviously. I like myself very much. And I like you too, though maybe not as much.” Gojo-sensei pokes his forehead. “What’s going to happen if you like yourself a little? Afraid all your careful reasoning will dissolve? Afraid you’ll go mad?”

Megumi doesn’t know how to respond without saying that yes, that is precisely what he’s afraid of.

“It’s so easy for you to pay attention to others,” he continues. “But you never turn that lens on yourself.”

It would be dark, Megumi thinks, if he turned that lens on himself. There would be nothing there. Everything he says he wants, every value he says he has, it’s all just his imitation of the characteristics he respects. The people he wants to hold close to him. Megumi simply enacts the course of his life for the sake of those who enabled it. If he turned that lens on himself, perhaps it would just reflect back Tsumiki’s face.

“Akari also told me that Tsumiki was one of the victims of the bridge curse.” Gojo-sensei rounds the counter to get his coffee. He reaches around Megumi for the sugar. Megumi doesn’t like him this close, talking about such dangerous things as Tsumiki. “She went with one of her friends back in junior high?”

“I don’t know. That’s back when we were barely talking.”

“So it was.”

Gojo-sensei digs around in the sugar bowl for the last remnants of sugar and doesn’t say anything else. Megumi would normally take the first opportunity to be done with the conversation. But maybe those days are behind him.

“I told Itadori and Kugisaki,” he says, “about her. Everything. It was nice.”

“Look at prickly Megumi, making friends.”

“I suppose I am. Anyway, Gojo-sensei. I just wanted to say.” What is it that he wants to say? Thanks for the advice. I still don’t understand it. I still can’t reconcile it. I still can’t understand you. I’m less alone now. “I’m giving it my all these days, I guess.”

“Sure,” Gojo-sensei says, not really getting it. But that’s fine.

Gojo-sensei sits down at the counter and pulls up another stool for Megumi. So he’s not just zipping in and out, then. It’s a rare event to have Gojo-sensei in the same place for more than two minutes.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says abruptly. “I’m often gone, but this was a bad time to be gone. I’m glad you’re okay.”

Megumi dips his head in acknowledgement, trying to act less bewildered than he feels. He never thought those were words he would hear directly from Gojo-sensei’s mouth. He’s long since settled for trying to infer them in scraps from head pats and crass jokes. An odd feeling settles in his stomach. It takes a moment to recognize it. For once, Megumi feels calm. He feels still.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Megumi says.

They drink their coffee in quiet companionship. Then the sound of Kugisaki and Itadori’s voices float down the hall, arguing about who has dibs on the laundry machine, and the day begins anew.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VI. DEATH BY DROWNING

On October 31st, Megumi doesn’t say anything to Gojo-sensei before he enters Shibuya Station. It never occurs to him to do so. He just watches his back disappear into the barrier and goes about his evening.

Just like when he was a kid shadowing missions, Megumi does his humble watchdog duty and waits for Gojo-sensei to emerge victorious. Megumi doesn’t much like waiting, but with Gojo-sensei, he knows it’ll never be long.

---

Megumi is trying to piece together what happened after he opened his domain in Shibuya, but he keeps losing track, and everyone in the infirmary is understandably too busy fighting for their lives to hear them out. It’s just past midnight. The battle is apparently over, and there is no one left for him to fight. But enough people are missing that if he thinks too hard about them he might go mad. So instead, he tries to piece together what happened after he opened his domain in Shibuya.

He definitely knows what happened before it: Gojo-sensei was sealed. Megumi and Itadori fought some nobody summoner. He met up with the Zen’ins, they fought the curse Dagon, and everything went to shit.

But after he opened his domain, everything is hazy. Someone slipped into his domain. A “ghost,” Naobito Zen’in said, “Toji.” Toji destroyed Dagon and then went for Megumi. They fought, but Megumi can’t remember winning or losing. He only knows that Toji asked him his last name. Megumi told him. Toji killed himself.

After that, his memory gets even worse. He was cornered by one Mahito’s other minions, easy pickings under normal circumstances, but insurmountable in his exhausted state. He’s pretty sure he summoned Mahoraga with the express intent of dying and causing a lot of chaos. Well, his rational idea was that no one would be able to defeat Mahoraga at least until Ieiri-sensei got to him, and hopefully until Gojo-sensei was unsealed, but his real idea was definitely dying.

Yet he woke up with enough energy to stumble to Ieiri-sensei’s infirmary outpost, which means that someone else healed him. And Gojo-sensei is still definitely sealed according to everyone pouring into the infirmary, which means that someone else defeated Mahoraga. This is what Megumi tries to piece together until the doors burst open and Nitta Arata rushes inside with Kugisaki’s body in his arms.

“She’s not dead,” he says to Megumi, and then to Ieiri-sensei, “But only just.”

Ieiri-sensei drops the arm she’s splintering. Megumi stumbles off his hospital bed to make room. They lay Kugisaki out on the sheets and they immediately start soaking red with her blood. He stares at her imploded face and somehow cannot think about anything except the time she told Megumi and Itadori about how facial symmetry was attractive, and how she had top ten percent symmetry according to an online quiz. She made them both take the quiz, too, and sulked for an hour when Itadori’s facial symmetry beat hers. Now her face is half-imploded and he can see into the socket of her eye. He can see her optic nerve.

“Get out of here, Megumi,” Ieiri-sensei says tensely. “You won’t know for the next day if she lives or dies. You’re fine, so get out of here.”

And so Megumi leaves, walking past Maki-senpai swathed in burn salve and Inumaki-senpai who has inexplicably lost his arm. He goes back towards Shibuya Station because there is nowhere else to go. Because it’s his only hope of understanding what happened after he opened his domain. Or because he wants to find the rest of the bodies before they roll into the infirmary.

He retraces his steps: first, to the intersection outside Shibuya Station where he summoned Mahoraga. There is a crater exploding from his feet extending around a hundred meters, crawling with Sukuna’s residuals. This answers his two main questions. He walks through the crater, turning some disfigured corpses over to see if the faces are familiar. There are hundreds in the single path he walks to Shibuya Station. The numbness that has encased him since Kugisaki appeared in the infirmary is pierced by a sharp stab: oh, Itadori. Good, kind Itadori. There will be no leaving Shibuya Station, not for any of the three first-years, not for the rest of their lives.

Megumi continues to the walkway in Shibuya Station where he thinks he fought Toji. There is no corpse; only the remnants of Playful Cloud remain. It tells him nothing. Megumi already knows everything important there is to understand about Toji; he knew the moment the sword entered the man’s head. Looking at the corpse would have only confirmed it for him. Now, at least, he can continue pretending not to know. He could have seen anything in his post-domain delirium. He could have imagined anything.

If you ever want to know what happened to your father, just ask.

Megumi has no questions anymore. His last stop on his tour of Shibuya Station is just to know for himself what he has heard countless times tonight. He descends to Level B5, Fukutoshin line. He brushes past the windows and assistants ushering shell-shocked civilians towards the escalators. There is no evidence for him on the platform, no answer. Just the entrails of Gojo-sensei’s cursed energy, dissipating by the second.

If Megumi had the Six Eyes, he would try to memorize its sight. Instead, all he can do is close his eyes and feel its bright, jagged edges before they fade: pure confidence, pride, and infallibility. The pristine light of Blue destroying the Max Elephant in the blood-splattered public pool. Stand up, Megumi. The heat of Gojo-sensei’s strike the moment it landed on Megumi’s chest and shattered his ribs. Very good, Megumi. The flicker of Infinity dismantling: a hand fastening his uniform on his first day at Jujutsu Tech, pinching his nose just to be annoying, flicking his forehead on the floor of a training room. The problem is your mindset, Megumi. The flicker of Infinity dismantling: a hand roughly scrubbing through his hair. Cupping his cheek in Tsumiki’s hospital room.

Megumi stands up. The platform is now empty, so it’s easy to see the black cloth lying a few meters away from him. He picks up the blindfold. He thinks about telling it something stupid, like I’ve got it from here, but in the end he just tucks it in his pocket.

Outside Shibuya Station, Megumi finds the Kyoto sorcerers regrouping. They’re all unharmed and are coordinating the civilian evacuations. Megumi offers to help them.

“You probably have more urgent things to do,” says Zen’in Mai. “Your sister, Tsumiki. Maki told me a while back she was part of the mass sleeping curse in 2017.”

This is how Megumi learns that after eighteen months, Tsumiki has woken up. Tsumiki’s curse was not inexplicable misfortune but calculated evil. Just as when Gojo-sensei offered him that very first choice, the path forward has never been clearer. Megumi has no questions anymore, except:

“What happened to Itadori?”

---

Megumi expects to track Itadori for days, but he finds him that very night, huddled around a fire with Okkotsu Yuta. He is predictably torn up about the corpses in the crater in Shibuya. Megumi tells him what he believes, and hopes it’s enough. It’s our fault, he says, which is true: Megumi took Itadori’s life and all the blood he would draw into his hands, and Megumi bears his responsibilities without regret. We’re sorcerers, not heroes, he says, which is true, at least to him. He will continue choosing the same people to save over and over again.

The three of them take shifts keeping watch before they go back to Jujutsu Tech in the morning. Megumi lies awake for two hours and then takes the final shift. An hour in, Okkotsu-senpai appears silently beside him. The hollows around his eyes are cut in stark shadows by the firelight.

“Still on African time,” he says by way of explanation.

“It’s good to see you, senpai,” he says, and it really is: Okkotsu-senpai is the closest there is to Gojo-sensei, and it’s easier to believe that things are fixable with him here. Gone are the days when Megumi would jealously watch his skyrocketing growth and wonder if he was going to be replaced.

“Good to be back. How are you doing?”

Megumi shrugs. Okkotsu-senpai could be referring to any number of events which reasonably would have disrupted his well-being. But to be honest, since he looked into the socket of Kugisaki’s eye he’s not sure he’s felt a single thing.

“For once, I feel like there is a definite action to take. If Tsumiki’s curse was always for the purpose of the culling game, then…”

“There’s a light to follow.”

And the possibility of an answer -- the possibility of an end, though he doesn’t dare express the hope out loud. Tsumiki is awake at this very moment. Within weeks, if Megumi succeeds, she will be healthy and safe. She will be sitting at the dinner table in the Jujutsu Tech common room with Itadori, and they’ll trade each other their sunny smiles.

“I like your little refrain,” Okkotsu-senpai says abruptly. “What you said to Itadori earlier. That sorcerers aren’t heroes. Because no one can truly judge us, we constantly have to prove the worth of our existence.”

“That’s what I believe.” Megumi glances at Okkotsu-senpai, the bottomless pits of his eyes. “Don’t you?”

“I continue to be a sorcerer because I want to feel like it’s okay for me to continue living,” he says, so lightly that Megumi has to think twice to understand the gravity of what he means. “The suffering I thought was forced upon me was my own doing. But despite this, Gojo-sensei rescued me, and Maki and the others gave me a place to belong. I treasure that belonging. I fight to protect it. That’s all there is.”

“So you do this for the sake of others. Gojo-sensei doesn’t like that I’m the same way. He tells me my mindset is limited.”

“He doesn’t have a problem with it in my case.” Okkotsu-senpai shrugs. “Maybe because it works for me.”

“I suppose it hasn’t worked for me. I’ve been able to glimpse it here and there -- what I can do with my technique -- but I can’t gather it all together and focus it into real power.” Maybe his problem is Mahoraga, and the tantalizing escape it promises. Instead, he says, “Maybe I don’t want it enough.”

“It sounds like you want it desperately.”

“Yeah, I want to save Tsumiki, and protect good people, and all those things I say are my values. But I don’t think that counts as a self, at least not one that can wield my sorcery fully.”

Okkotsu-senpai stretches his hands out to warm them against the fire. Megumi’s suddenly reminded of the shadow puppets he used to practice in the long evenings he and Tsumiki would spend alone. Back then, though he’d never have admitted it, all he wanted was his father back. Someone to keep close to him without fearing they’d disappear. In that way, nothing much has changed about him at all.

“I don’t think I am selfless -- meaning altruistic, but also meaning an absence of self. I want to connect with the people around me. I want to feel loved,” Okkotsu-senpai says. “Those are desires that can form a self, just as strong as the desire to be the strongest or to become head of the Zen’in clan. Gojo-sensei once told me that love is the greatest curse of all. I suppose if it’s cursed energy we wield, that curse is the seed of my strength.

“Your problem isn’t that you want the wrong things. It’s that you can’t accept that those are the things you want. And who could blame you? You’ve been listening to Gojo-sensei your whole life, after all. But the closer I get to him in strength -- which is the only closer there is with him, really -- the more I begin to understand him. Gojo-sensei always tells us we’ll die alone, right? But you don’t live alone. He does. But you don’t.”

“I once asked him why he was training me. He said he wanted a friend.”

“Right. I imagine that is probably the most honest he’s been with you.” Okkotsu-senpai feeds the fire a stick and it crackles with life. “I’m sprinting as fast as I can to catch up to him. But until that point, he’s not going to understand that one’s strength can come from others as much as it does from oneself.”

Be selfish, be selfish, Gojo-sensei has always told him. Self-sacrifice, Megumi’s favorite game to play, is the opposite of that. It’s the easy way out of staking any sort of value on his life. But what Okkotsu-senpai is describing is different. It’s something truer than Megumi’s feeble altruism and more human than Gojo-sensei’s absolute individuality. If Megumi could only grasp it fully.

“One more thing, senpai.” Megumi doesn’t know how to broach this. But with the amount of useful advice he’s gotten tonight, he wants to try his luck. “You know Gojo-sensei only rescued you because of your power. Right.”

“Of course I know that. He’s Gojo-sensei, after all.”

“So do you think you only belong here because of that power?”

“I don’t think about myself in that way. Who I am with something, or without something. There’s no undoing the choices that were already made. But if I were to lose my technique at this moment, I don’t doubt that I would still want to stay here with everyone, and that they would still hold me in their lives.”

Megumi considers this. He thinks about who he is with, and without. He thinks about where he belongs. Behind them, Itadori sleeps fitfully. In Ieiri-sensei’s office, Kugisaki sleeps dreamlessly, or sleeps dead. In front of them, the sun creeps over the horizon. In Saitama, the dawn will be spilling into their old apartment, reflecting off the layer of dust on the kitchen table. Somewhere, Tsumiki is taking off her oxygen mask, pulling the tubes from her arm. Somewhere, or nowhere, Gojo-sensei is waiting for them to save him. Megumi considers, when he returns the blindfold he still has in his pocket, what it is he will have to say.

--

When Fushiguro Tsumiki wakes up, her body is not her own. Maybe she’s not Fushiguro Tsumiki anymore, if something else that inhabits her body is controlling her. Maybe she is no one at all. The thing in her body has her memories, after all. It knows with what cadence to talk to Megumi and how to get him to let down his guard.

Megumi, you look older. How long has it been? Megumi, you look tired. Megumi, be careful. I am not who I seem.

Helpless until the last, she cannot speak a single of those words through the mouth that isn’t hers.

You’re already dead, the thing in her body sneers to her soul, so shut the fuck up.

“You may as well go back to sleep,” Megumi tells her. After all this time, still only trying to protect her. Oh, her rash, brave brother and his heart too big for his chest to hold. Seeing him through the distance of eyes that are not her own, she realizes that in the last year, she has become an image. Megumi looks straight through her. To him, Tsumiki can be nothing but good. She cannot be anything dangerous. She cannot be unsaveable, because that would destroy Megumi, because saving her is Megumi’s only reason. So the thing in her body walks her rash, brave brother and his too-big heart right into its trap.

The thing in her body reveals itself. Tsumiki watches her brother break. And then, in a rush of events she can hardly even perceive, let alone understand, Megumi’s body is no longer his own as well.

So this is how it will end, then. Of all the ways she thought her life could go to hell, she didn’t anticipate this: their bodies, twin puppets, enacting the perverse fantasy of two age-old spirits. Of all the ways she thought her life could end, she didn’t imagine it being at the hands of her brother, hands that aren’t even his own.

Megumi, wake up. Megumi, stop, or you will carry my blood on these hands that aren’t yours for the rest of your life.

To be fair, the blood on Megumi’s hands has never been his. The path of the sorcerer was never his to choose. It was her, it was all for her, and at the end all she has to offer is her nonexistence.

She can’t apologize. She can’t thank him. She can’t beg him to find another reason. Tsumiki dies silently, by drowning, with water in her lungs.

---

Megumi sinks silently, by drowning. And there he sleeps until Sukuna raises Megumi’s soul, the perfect shield, to helplessly endure the full brunt of his teacher’s strength.

Megumi is underwater, and then he isn’t. He is in Gojo-sensei’s void, that familiar landscape that’s always reminded him of some sort of contemporary art museum, that’s made him consider more than once that Gojo-sensei might have a more sophisticated imagination than Megumi gives him credit for. He stares right into Gojo-sensei’s eyes, glittering and exhilarated, and understands that Gojo-sensei doesn’t see Megumi looking back at him.

Megumi knows how Unlimited Void works. An infinity of information is ultimately meaningless. You don’t get to instantly learn astrophysics (Tsumiki once asked that precise question). Time stops and unravels and knits back together in the wrong order, and it all happens over again, and the immenseness of the universe destroys your individual existence. In short, you die and don’t learn astrophysics.

So be it. It’s for the better to let Sukuna die with him, in the cage of his body. He would free Itadori from the curse of his measured existence. He wouldn’t have to watch anyone else die. He would join everyone else lost to this world. His mother. Tsumiki.

Megumi thinks about Gojo-sensei, leaning obnoxiously into his face, telling him to be selfish.

I am being selfish. I don’t want this anymore. I can’t take this anymore. Isn’t this enough? Haven’t I done enough?

Megumi thinks about Tsumiki. She cups his cheek. She dabs the strawberry juice from his mouth.

I’m not leaving you. She lied, oh, how she lied to him. It’s impossible.

There is nothing left for him in this world anymore.

Except --

Itadori and Kugisaki yell into his face at karaoke, and their spit is kind of landing on him and it’s gross and uncomfortable but he still wants to be nowhere else. Maki-senpai’s staff spins and lands against his blade, and he feels right, his shadow catching him when he falls. Gojo-sensei insists on dinner, on some inane arcade game, on dessert so sweet it makes Megumi ill. But when he’s with Megumi, when it’s just them, Gojo-sensei laughs and his shoulders relax and his smile is briefly real and true. So he relents, like he always does, and lets himself go quiet and still.

It’s just Megumi and Gojo-sensei, here, in the cocoon of nothingness. In the escape of everything. It is finally quiet.

---

In the end, Megumi doesn’t have a choice.

Gojo-sensei reaches into his chest and pulls out his heart. He hits him with Red, Blue, and Hollow Purple.

And it doesn’t even matter. In the end, Megumi stares from Sukuna’s eyes at Gojo-sensei’s halved corpse, and watches as his own mouth is pulled into an ear-to-ear grin.

---

I’ve had enough, he keeps telling Itadori, begging him to live. Live, and for what? Every role he’s had to play, he’s failed. Every vow he’s made, broken. Every contract he’s made, voided. There is nothing left for him in this world anymore.

---

Megumi is home again.

Home, Tsumiki’s mother’s apartment - what an unfitting word for that place. He looks up, and there is Tsumiki, draped over the balcony. She waves.

Footsteps sound behind him. Megumi turns around. And here he is again, neck craned upwards.

“What’s with that face?” he says.

To be precise, it is a face that does not belong here, but it is a strange face nonetheless. Tears are rolling down that face. What a strange sight.

“It’s just lonely without you, Fushiguro.”

Here Megumi is again. Once more, a hand. A choice. A chance to start all over, to lose everything, to try to give it all a meaning again. Why would he ever do such a thing?

Who are you, Fushiguro Megumi?

Megumi does not know. He likely never will. All he knows is that tears are running down Itadori’s face. And yes, if Megumi ventures outside his soul, back into the world, he will owe Itadori his life. He owes to the living a sum he will die repaying. He owes to the dead an infinity he can never repay.

But tears are running down Itadori’s face. And Megumi understands it, with the slow press of a decade’s realization:

He is loved. He always was. And that’s enough of a reason. That was always his reason.

It’s obvious: there are more people in the world than oneself. Megumi can’t make himself keep going, but Itadori can. Megumi can’t be righteous and good, but Itadori can, and Megumi can keep him close to his heart. And maybe that’s okay: Megumi will crave closeness. He will chase love. He doesn’t have to be anything more than that. Selfishness; selflessness. The line blurs.

If this is what gives his life value, then so be it. Once more, he’ll try living for the sake of someone else.

---

Megumi is sixteen years old and he doesn’t know anything about how the world works.

In theory, he saw all of spacetime during the five infinities his soul endured at Gojo-sensei’s hand. But he doesn’t remember any of it, and it hasn’t left him with any wisdom: only a constant, faint ache in his chest. As though he saw all of spacetime and it was perfectly beautiful and perfectly sad. Ieiri-sensei says his cursed energy hovers in his brain more now. She also tells him he’s experiencing severe grief.

Yes, if grief is an emotion, it must be this. Whatever he felt when Tsumiki fell asleep was just practice for picking the bones from her ashes, setting the flowers down at her headstone. Whatever he felt when Gojo-sensei was sealed was just practice for standing with Ieiri-sensei and Okkotsu-senpai at the back of the Gojo family wake, watching Renji carry out the rites meant for the eldest son. This is grief: the weight in his chest, the stone he will carry for the rest of his life.

“I learned to cherish it,” Itadori tells him quietly, on one of the long early-spring nights where they sit outside together on the balcony behind their dorm rooms. “The sadness, I mean. Like, I’ll love them forever. So I’ll be sad about it forever. That’s fine with me.”

It’s the worst kind of platitude, the kind that Tsumiki would have loved. What use is it to love someone forever when they’re dead and buried? And yet, because Megumi is feeling less and less sure he understands how the world works with each passing day, he isn’t sure. Maybe his grief is meaningful. Maybe he’s allowed to let it give death some meaning.

Sorry, Megumi, but your dad’s dead, Gojo-sensei’s scrawled-out last words tell him. I killed the guy!

And before he knows it, before he can recognize the sensation, Megumi is laughing, affection and sadness blooming twofold inside him. I killed the guy! Like it ever mattered. Maybe long ago Megumi cared about that man, Fushiguro Toji, and wondered why it was Megumi he chose to leave behind. But not anymore. Not after everyone who has come since.

Slowly, Megumi picks up the pieces. He apologizes tenfold for almost destroying the world with his lack of will to live and is brushed off every time. He has nothing to apologize for, nothing to repay, nothing to fulfill. And each time he is told this, he makes himself believe it.

Of course, he still feels otherwise, in the long spells of insomnia that have haunted him closely since the month his soul spent sunken. He traces back the years of memories and tries to find where it all went wrong. He watches himself, night after night, shutting the door in Tsumiki’s face. Looking her right in the eyes as he lied that he didn’t need her. He only wanted to protect her. He wanted to deserve her choice to call him family, even when he had told her to choose otherwise. He wanted any reason to make his life worthwhile, and he made it Tsumiki even though she had never asked that of him. The one thing she wanted from him was her own love returned, open-hearted, plain and simple. And he couldn’t give it to her. Now he brings flowers to her grave instead of her bedside and doesn’t think about worth or obligation and all. He just misses her steady gaze and wishes he had actually known who she was.

And after laying the freshly-picked stems at Tsumiki’s grave he goes empty-handed to Gojo-sensei’s, not knowing what to bring for the man who called flowers trivial and yet gifted him the lily bulbs that are now reaching for sunlight in the first-year dorm kitchen. He sits on the ground, muddy with spring rain. He thinks about ten years and what exactly it is that he wanted. He thinks about cruelty and kindness, selfishness and selflessness, living alone and dying alone. And at the end of all his thinking he still isn’t sure of anything. For all the infinites his soul endured he can’t understand Gojo-sensei any better. He still can’t absolve him. He can only press his forehead against the cold stone and remember the rough touch of that hand against his head and let the tears fall.

Megumi stands up. This ritual will be repeated for as long as he lives: grief is one face of the stone he carries in his chest. He’s not sure anymore what he owes the dead or the living, but he doesn’t need the scale to be settled anymore. He’ll try to let himself be loved and he’ll try to love others, excavate the tarpit of his sunken soul, impossibly painful as it will be. He has no other choice. There was never any other way for him to live.

Megumi stands up. The sky opens up above him as he walks back towards the school. Spring rain pours over him. And somewhere beneath the earth, roots grip down into the soil, readying for the terrible burst from the ground, for the rush of cold air.