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Suguru saw everything.
From the beginning to the very end.
The fact that his body was taken over by Kenjaku meant only one thing — his soul remained attached to this world, and nothing could be done about it. He could only wander aimlessly, unseen by anyone, truly alone, able only to stare. To observe.
As the creature hiding behind his identity destroyed this world. A hideous, cruel creature that Geto wanted to tear apart, even with his bare hands. Something that used his, Suguru’s, face to imprison Satoru in the Prison Realm.
Satoru
God, he seemed so scared when he saw his fake. Geto tried, honestly tried to prevent it, even took control of his body for a short period of time, but it wasn’t enough. His actions are never enough.
Gojo was imprisoned, and the ill-fated cube rested in the folds of Kenjaku’s (not Geto’s, never) clothes. There was nothing Suguru could do.
And then Mimiko and Nanako died.
His beautiful girls.
Damn Sukuna, damn Kenjaku, damn Jogo, damn everyone. His wonderful girls died trying to save his body. Long ago, Suguru saved them, raised them, cherished them like flowers, prickly but incredibly beautiful. Wayward, capricious, but so loving. His daughters. God, how he loved them.
Now he couldn’t even look at their bodies. As soon as Sukuna decapitated Mimiko, Suguru turned away, immediately covering his opened mouth with his hands. He was no longer alive, but he seemed to feel and absorb it all. He felt sick, everything was swimming in front of his eyes, and in his ears there was only one thing — Nanako’s heart-rending scream, which was hopelessly shaking the lifeless body of the twin.
And then there was no trace left of the surviving girl, except for a huge pool of blood spreading across the concrete.
Sukuna was laughing.
He laughed, inciting Jogo to attack him, and Geto seemed frozen to the ground, unable to move, His girls were dead… As soon as the cursed spirits left the subway to enjoy the fight outside, Suguru dared to turn to what was left of the twins.
He immediately threw up.
He was a cross between a spirit, a human and a ghost, incapable of being fully transported to the afterlife. He didn’t need food or water. He couldn’t get sick or die. But he felt pain and grieved with every cell of his being. It was as if a piece of his soul, stuck in limbo, was being violently torn off with each death, leaving bleeding, unhealed wounds.
Suguru was not Mimiko and Nanako’s biological father, but he loved them as his own daughters. He remembered all the moments he had spent with them in the smallest detail. The first cold, the first trip to the amusement park, the first ice cream and the first curse they banished. The personalities that sparkled with bright stars were wiped off the face of the earth, drenched in blood, torn apart. They were gone. Gone, gone, gone, not remembered by anyone alive. Another victim of terrible circumstances.
Suguru fastidiously wiped the saliva from his chin and straightened up, although the nausea didn’t go away, seeping deep into his translucent insides.
He was only happy about one thing. The girls’ deaths were quick and almost painless. They didn’t suffer and didn’t even have time to realize that they were dead (were killed, he corrected himself).
There were many more people after the girls. The same senseless victims.
And then there was Nanami.
Suguru, wearily leaning against the subway wall, watched as his former friend, half burned, almost dead, gave all his strength in an unequal battle with the monsters created by Mahito. And he won. He fell down and got up again. Geto already knew how it would end. Nanami’s fate, like everyone else’s, was a foregone conclusion.
All he could do was watch. Watch everyone around him die. Suguru could do nothing about it.
Useless.
Apparently, this was his punishment. To witness death and not be able to help in any way. A punishment for all the pain he caused this world and his friends. To everyone he once loved. It was as if some omnipotent hand was pushing his head into a bloody mess of pain, reproachfully saying: “This is was you deserve.” Except Suguru knew it himself. But why should others suffer from this?
“Of course,” the creature continued, laughing, “all the troubles are not from you. You are not the center of the universe.”
Suguru knew that too. The sorcerers suffered at the behest of Sukuna, at the behest of Kenjaku and every cursed spirit involved in the Shibuya Incident. But his body was also used. And he couldn’t isolate his variable from this system.
Now Nanami was ready to die, frozen in the middle of the mountains of monster corpses, clearly feeling Mahito’s hand on his back. Suguru only pursed his lips, slightly bowing his head, but not taking his eyes off his former friend. Somewhere in the distance, hurried footsteps could be heard — it was Yuuji running, having regained control of his body.
And then both Nanami and Suguru saw him.
Haibara
Dear Haibara, who had returned to the world of the living only to take his best friend with him. God, he was still the same as he had been when they were students, a small, innocent teenager in a school uniform with genuinely kind eyes. Suguru’s amethyst eyes opened belatedly, unable to process the information he was receiving. He remembered, of course, he remembered standing in the morgue and covering everything that was left of Haibara’s body with a cloth. How he felt his blood on his hands.
The same Haibara was now standing and smiling at Nanami, pointing his finger at Yuuji. Of course, how could Kento leave without any last words?
However, when Mahito ended the life of the once great sorcerer, Haibara didn’t disappear. Suguru suddenly realized that he was being watched. His body tensed instinctively, and he straightened up, meeting the gaze of the former underclassman.
But Haibara didn’t say anything. He only stretched his lips into a sad smile, flashed his chocolate eyes, and vanished into the air.
Damn it.
Suguru almost growled with indignation.
And while Mahito, flashing a maniacal smile, was killing Yuuji, Geto could only stand there, glaring at the place where Haibara disappeared a few seconds ago. Suguru’s chest was heaving with irritation, even though he didn’t need air or breath.
After all, it was a punishment. His semi-existence couldn’t be perceived in any other way.
Everything that happened later in Shibuya merged into a single mess.
Mahito’s death, Kenjaku’s appearance, that bastard using the strongest form of this technique. The final battle and, in the end, the defeat of the jujutsu sorcerers.
When Kenjaku playfully waved the Prison Realm in front of Yuuji, Suguru’s desire to strangle this creature returned with double force. He didn’t care about his own body anymore, he wanted someone to take his head off. For someone to crush those brains in his body.
Satoru was lost, they couldn’t save him.
“The Culling Game” has begun.
Suguru watched passively, having lost interest in anything. He didn’t need to be around Kenjaku all the time, so he spent the seemingly endless hours wandering aimlessly. Around Jujutsu Tech, watching the surviving sorcerers assemble themselves, accumulate strength and secretly plan Satoru’s rescue. Around Tokyo, now ruined, filled with curses and people killing each other like it was all a game to them.
Nineteen days lasted like a whole year, but in the end, Satoru Gojo was unsealed, and since then Suguru hadn’t left his side.
Two days before the final battle with Sukuna, in the dark of night, Geto found his former best friend at his desk, and something froze in his chest when he realized what Gojo was actually writing.
Letters to his students in case he dies.
“Idiot,” Suguru whispered stubbornly, knowing that no one could hear him.
Suguru, we are the strongest! Of course, we can handle everything.
Two days after these words, Toji Fushiguro killed Satoru, leaving him with huge scars from throat to thigh for the rest of his life.
I’m the strongest! I’d win.
Satoru never tired of telling his students.
The very idea that Gojo considered his death as a possible option was terrifying. He couldn’t. No. Not him.
When Satoru handed Shoko the sealed envelopes with letters and crooked faces drawn on them, she didn’t say anything. She only accepted his request in silence, but Suguru saw her eyes glisten with tears. Shoko knew it too. She was thinking the same thing.
And Satoru continued to train furiously, overcoming even his own limits. In the evenings, he helped Kusakabe and the others plan the battle.
Suguru, almost like a guardian angel (if only he could be one), followed him everywhere. Silent, invisible to anyone, he was always by Satoru’s side.
Until the crucial day came.
And here they were.
In Shinjuku, being destroyed, literally torn in half by two powerful people, demigods, monsters, in whose hands the power of the entire jujutsu world was concentrated. They didn’t fight like sorcerers. They didn’t fight like humans. And not like animals, no. They were superior beings, using all their skill.
But not all their strength.
Suguru, who didn’t even try to dodge the flying debris — they flew trough him anyway, even though he watched the battle unfold with admiration, realized two things with a pang of resentment and horror.
First of all, Gojo genuinely enjoyed the fight. He had always been unsurpassed, perfect, and the most powerful sorcerer of modern times, but this entailed eternal loneliness — no one could math him in battle. And even though Suguru kept him company, he couldn’t help but be offended by the way Satoru smiled while fighting Sukuna. Of course, he had already seen a similar smile on his friend’s face, but not during their training together.
Secondly, Sukuna was holding back. And this realization sent a wave of cold through Suguru’s already breathless, translucent silhouette. The King of Curses wasn’t fighting with his full strength, and it was terrifying. This meant that Gojo, the invincible one, could lose.
Suguru just stood in his place, silently, with a shortness of breath, watching the great battle that was inscribing itself in jujutsu history. Not a single muscle trembled in his body, only his gaze didn’t leave Satoru, who was moving with inhuman speed.
When his nose started bleeding and he couldn’t use Domain Expansion, Suguru closed his eyes.
That was the end.
But the end didn’t come. Satoru just laughed and did something beyond human control again. He exceeded all expectations of his students. Playfully, escaped his own death and allowed the battle to drag him down again. But Suguru, opening his eyes, only frowned. Even from afar, he could feel (he had always felt) how Gojo’s muscles were trembling on the verge of exhaustion, supported only by the reverse cursed technique.
And then the Hollow Purple happened.
And Gojo won.
Suguru took off.
He won, he won, he won.
Suguru jumped through the destroyed buildings of Shinjuku, flew through the debris that bit into the ground to get next to Satoru.
He won.
He won.
Suguru fell to his knees as he reached the epicenter of the explosion.
Satoru Gojo won.
But only for a split second.
“Satoru, no, no, no,” Geto muttered softly, his hands hovering over his best friend’s bloody, mutilated body.
And the body — almost just a body, not a person — was trembling, quietly, almost peacefully, if it weren’t for the blood gurgling in his lungs, bubbling on his lips. If it wasn’t for the fact that the lower half of that body was no more.
Suguru gently cupped Satoru’s face, kneeling in front of him, trying at least in the last second to give the greatest sorcerer peace in this world. He didn’t notice or feel how moisture rushed to his eyes until the first tear fell on Gojo’s bloody cheek.
Suguru was crying.
Of course he was crying. He was terrible, he caused everyone so much pain, he left his family to create a new one and then abandoned it as well, but died a peaceful death thanks to Satoru. Satoru, who held him gently in his arms like a crystal vase as he breathed his last in this world, and wept, refusing to let Shoko, who froze next to him with the same tears in her eyes, burn his body. Satoru, who defended his students to the last. Satoru, who didn’t deserve any of what was happening right now.
No, no, no.
Satoru shouldn’t have died like this. Raised as a tool, not a person, used as a weapon, imprisoned in a Realm only to come out of it and die.
Tears slowly dripped onto the cheeks of the quietly choking body, and Suguru tried to erase these traces from Satoru’s cheeks, holding him in his last moment as gently as he could.
He knew that no one could see or feel him.
Until Satoru twitched almost imperceptibly, squeezing through his perforated, whistling lungs:
“Su…”
Suguru — it echoed in both of their minds.
The inhumanly blue eyes focused for the first time, seeing in front of them the shocked, tearful, upside-down, but so familiar face of his best friend.
His one and only.
Gojo’s hand twitched one last time, trying to reach out to Suguru, to touch him at least now, but there was no strength for that. Satoru’s eyes widened in fright, as if he could still feel, think, be aware. It was as if he expected to recover and only now realized he was going to die. Suguru smiled mournfully, reassuringly, continuing to hold Gojo’s cheeks in his hands, now knowing that he could feel it.
This meant that Satoru had begun to cross over to another world. But his eyes remained alive. Now scared anymore, no. They were just restless, trying to look back, to see what was happening around them.
But the world around them froze. People who were dying, but still considered alive had nothing to know about the future. Satoru’s battle was over — Suguru knew that. But the blue eyes continued to listen.
I did it, I won, didn’t I?
“You’ve done so well, Satoru. You did everything you could. You did it,” Geto whispered softly. “Now rest.”
The great Satoru Gojo shouldn’t have died such a shameful death. But now he had no choice, and Suguru could only hope that he would finally find peace, at least in the afterlife. He knew that Nanami-kun and Haibara were waiting for him there. Riko and Kuroi. Yaga-sensei. Even Mimiko and Nanako.
They will take care of him there.
And Suguru will remain here, and eternal observer, until Kenjaku releases his body.
But Suguru also learned something during this time outside the realm of the living. Suguru learned to believe in Gojo’s students. He knew they could handle it all. He knew that sooner of later he would be free to join Satoru and the others.
In the meantime, he was just seeing off his best, one and only friend on his final journey.
“You did well, Satoru. You’ve won.”
Blood bubbled for the last time on the lips of the greatest sorcerer of our generation, and Satoru, hardly finding the strength to try to smile at Suguru one last time, left this world, taking with him the darkened eyes that no longer sparkled like a sapphire. The strongest sorcerer, the first owner of the Six Eyes in hundreds of years, the head of the Gojo clan, the mentor of the first-year students in Jujutsu Tech, an arrogant, annoying man and the best of friends. At that moment, he died.
Suguru exhaled shakily. And got up from the ground.
The battle wasn’t over yet.
But Satoru Gojo found peace for the first time in his life. That was all that mattered.