Work Text:
A woman rarely had the choice of doing things the way she wanted to. Men on the other hand were born to dictate the world’s story. It was a sad fact if you were part of the so-called fairer sex and while Mei Mei wasn’t fond of it, she knew better than to dwell on things she couldn’t change.
She knew that no matter how many curses she exorcised, no matter how many enemies she beat, she’d always lose against another Gojou, another Zenin, another man. Starting at Jujutsu High, Mei Mei had still been naive enough to believe in a better world, in her chance but by now, she had learnt – and she had learnt quickly – that it was way easier and better for her mental health (as well as her retirement savings) to focus on the one thing she was the best in: money.
Sure, a lot of people criticised her hustle culture, but a lot of those people also had a whole lot less money in their accounts than her. It was easy to attribute it to jealousy, so she did.
In fact, she had to in order to get rid of the current pest she was going up against at the moment. Not that it was difficult, but better jujutsu users had been eliminated after underestimating their enemies.
However, she had encountered a problem tonight as opposed to her previous engagements, a version of the classic trolley problem that wasn’t as classic as one was used to. Mei Mei was probably the only person in the world who was truly conflicted about this, but she also wasn’t pure of heart. A girl had to eat, after all.
The situation at hand was the following: her contract was strictly about rescuing one person, getting rid of their ‘demon’ and receiving a hefty paycheck in return. Yet, Mei Mei had encountered the unfortunate event of quite a few civilians that had gone unmentioned. The easy solution would be to just fulfil her contract, it wouldn’t be her first time and people died all the time. She wouldn’t feel guilty.
Why did she keep having flashbacks of the fight between Gojou and Getou, and Fushiguro Toji then? Sure enough, she hadn’t been present back then, she wasn’t one to judge, but she had heard the story, she had seen the aftermath. Neither of them had been the same afterwards (first of all because Fushiguro had died from a giant hole where half his body used to be).
Mei Mei had received enormous backlash on multiple occasions when she had spoken her mind. Objectively speaking (and most people were too weak, too clouded by emotion to do so), Fushiguro’s plan had been brilliant. Sure, he was a unit in his own right, but against an omnipotent brat like Gojou, he was the underdog - nowadays, he’d be even more so.
And yet, yet, he had probably also been the only person in the world to get closest to a win over Gojou Satoru. The reason for that was his meticulous planning, the nearly perfect execution of which. And of course, his lack of emotional baggage. It was a job and Fushiguro Toji was the right man for it. Mei Mei had enough self-awareness to accept a fellow hustler and recognise a person’s prime motivator: Pecunia non olet.
In some kind of cruel fascination, it came as both surprise and disappointment, that in the end, Gojou still came out triumphantly, killing Fushiguro with a cannon ball like blast, destroying roughly a third of the infamous sorcerer killer’s body. A feat in itself for both. Mei Mei had read the reports, clinically Gojou had been dead, his cursed technique working beyond death though had brought him back, cementing him as the reborn messiah or something along those lines. Ever since, he had been even more insufferable, attracting his fair share of (mocking) killing threats by his colleagues simply for being himself – “full of shit” as Getou once said.
Surely, Fushiguro’s tactics had been terrific for not knowing Gojou and would have been successful with anybody else, killing a sorcerer on the spot before they even realised their mistake. However, Mei Mei would have gone a different route if she had been tasked with eliminating the star plasma vessel (and therefore removing its protectors from the picture in the process). There wouldn’t have been a single chance of regeneration for Gojou had it been for Mei Mei, squashing the little brat and his (then) best friend like flies under her heels.
Thankfully though, she wasn’t inclined by the “bad guys”.Much. She valued the world and the business she lived and strived in way too much, enjoyed its perks and the comfortable way of living she had created for herself. There was no need for her to turn rogue, nor destroy everything she had worked so hard for.
The service potential of her current life outweighed that of any other possibilities by far. Of course, there were certain other options if the status quo ever changed (something she wasn’t opposed to in general but required too much work at the moment to make it worth her while quite yet).
With all these musings combined and evaluated, Mei Mei came to a decision in her current predicament. One she wouldn’t have made a couple of months ago and yet, here she was. Maybe she would come to regret this, maybe she wouldn’t. Right now, there was no more time to ponder.
Determination on her face and heart, she started to cut down curse after curse, exorcising all the haunting demons present. It took a little more work, but work nonetheless (unpaid on top), to free the place of all unwanted beings and spirits, but it was worth it in the end: a spotless, unblemished space with no imminent danger for humans.
Not only Mei Mei’s target was safe, but all the other unsuspecting civilians survived the ordeal without as much as a scratch. When told she’d receive no extra for the additional work, she simply scoffed and shrugged, playing the aloof woman without a care in the world.
Later, when she checked her paycheck, Mei Mei wasn’t really happy with the outcome. Sure, sure, it was a win for humanity and all the ethical points raised in jujutsu society but there wasn’t much joy in her heart. No burden was lifted off her shoulders, no light feeling spread through her body that all the goody-two-shoes always talked about. She didn’t feel different, she didn’t feel better.
It was then that Mei Mei decided that altruism and charity were no characteristics of hers.