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One.
Two.
Three.
Click — a rectangular video blurs in and out of focus as the cracked phone camera adjusts to the uneven lighting of the room. Open shoji doors allow half of it to be illuminated by afternoon sunlight, but a veil of shadow shrouds the other half in darkness. An old man sits cross legged on the tatami floor between them; bisected by the contrast and laughing a harsh, bellowing thing with a gourd sitting in his right hand. His upper body sways in time with his amusement, sound echoing off the fusuma walls and crackling out of the device’s speakers. He braces his available hand against the surface of his chest, as if to keep himself stable or force his body to simmer down after his outburst.
“What I think of the boy, huh?” He finally says, delight lingering in his slurred tone as he appraises the unseen videographer sitting behind the phone. They shift, moving the video along with them as they breathe a quiet, irritated sigh and make an affirmative noise. He barks his laugh this time, taking a swig from his gourd before stroking his thin mustache in mock consideration as his face breaks into a grin. “Well, he is my son. Surely you can infer all of the fluffy, affectionate feelings that come with that title? I’d say I’m far more interested in why a special grade sorcerer such as yourself might be so interested in what I have to say about him that you would schedule a meeting like this.”
“That’s…” The videographer begins hesitantly.
“Hm?”
“Irrelevant to the question I asked.” They finish, stern.
“Sensitive topic?” The old man hums, grin growing ever wider. “Fine. If I had to say, then he’s always been an odd one… more interested in shogi and napping than his own training, strength, or station within our clan. He’s probably the Zenin heir candidate with the largest supporting faction, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he acts. Still, he’ll be a good head if he manages to make it. He’s too —”
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“— smart.” A teenage girl drawls, leaning against the railing of her dorm balcony at night with a cigarette held between her lips. There’s no rush to her body language as takes a drag, exhaling a cloud of smoke without meeting the cracked camera’s lens or the videographer’s gaze even once. “He’s the sort of strategist that might’ve been a good commander, if we were an army instead of different clans and organizations. I guess.”
“Isn’t that technically what the elders are?” The videographer responds teasingly, voice slightly rough.
She lets out a light, breathy sort of laugh at that; “Are you actually suggesting that he’s going to end up as one of those grumpy old men that Satoru loathes, after he graduates from this place? Him?”
A pause.
“Actually,” she hums consideringly, “I guess I could see that for him, if he managed to gather enough motivation to work for it instead of deciding that it was too troublesome. I know I’m not much good at fighting either, but I’ve got the reverse cursed technique going for me… it’s a real testament to how smart he is, that he’s managed to get as far as he has with how lazy he is. Or maybe it’s actually a testament to how lazy he is, that he’s only managed to get as far as he has with how smart he is.”
“You think he could be ranked higher?”
The teenage girl taps at her cigarette, watching the burnt edge as she encourages it to crumble off and fall to the ground below her balcony. Still refusing to meet the cracked camera’s lens or the videographer’s gaze. “I think… that he knows more than he’s letting on, and can do more than he bothers to show us during training or even on missions. When he fights, he’s almost suspiciously —”
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“— fast and cool!” A teenage boy says cheerily at the cracked camera, round brown eyes sparkling and voice clear despite the exertion obvious in his flushed face. His matching brown hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat that he fails to wipe away all of with his towel. “That’s the first thing I ever really thought of him. When we met, it was hard to even introduce myself because Gojo-san was so excited that they’d be attending school together, and, afterward, we were both too busy for us to get to know each other properly. He was just the pretty, mysterious classmate I knew nothing about until the exchange event cleared up our schedules, and he saved my butt during the group battle round!”
The video pans slowly to the right as the audio goes quiet, broken only by occasional static as bursts of wind brush up against the phone’s speakers. The teenage boy continues to catch his breath and pat his face dry, taking a sip from a neon sports bottle as he waits patiently for the videographer to get their thoughts in order. The new, accidental angle reveals the edge of the training field that the two are standing on, in addition to the foundation of one of the traditional buildings surrounding it. Eventually, the videographer gives up on keeping the teenage boy in frame and begins filming the ground as they breathe. Their shoes are just barely visible, dyed black with a split toe like tabi socks.
“Don’t you… doesn’t he make you angry, sometimes?” They eventually ask, still filming the ground instead of moving back. “The way he talks about sorcery? About being a sorcerer? Like it’s nothing?”
The teenage boy makes a soft, slightly confused sound. “Not really? Maybe I just don’t understand what you mean… but the way he’s talked to me about sorcery and being a sorcerer has always felt —”
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“— normal.”
“Normal?”
“Yes, normal,” confirms the exasperated teenager on screen, hazel eyes briefly meeting the camera before returning to the vending machine in front of him. Its glow illuminates his face and brightens the video where the windows of the school hallway fail due to the darkness outside, and he clicks his tongue in irritation when it refuses his bill. He begins straightening it methodically. “I find him to be an ordinary person, if somewhat lazy and impolite… but I suppose I should’ve expected that with Gojo-san being his childhood friend. I think we should really be more grateful that he didn’t turn out to be half as irritating, despite how much time the two have certainly spent together over the years.”
“Hey now, Satoru isn’t that bad,” the videographer protests halfheartedly.
The teenager’s face scrunches as if recalling an unpleasant memory, feeding his bill back into the machine and pressing the buttons for coffee and cola in quick succession. They drop with a metallic clang that causes the phone’s speakers to peak uncomfortably, and he stores the cola in his pocket before opening the coffee and taking a sip. “I suppose not. He’s been less unpleasant to spend time with since your mission back in August, a few months ago.”
Stiff silence rings.
The phone begins shaking, blurring the video and combining with the cracked camera to make most of the footage impossible to decipher beyond vague shapes and colors. It struggles with the lighting.
“My apologies. I shouldn’t have said that, when I know none of you enjoy discussing what happened.”
“It’s fine,” the videographer politely insists, “let’s just get back to the question, yeah?”
The phone stops shaking, as if by force, and re-focuses on the teenager just as his face shifts from considering to neutral once more. “I haven’t talked to him much, honestly, but Haibara seems to like him decently enough. Drags him along with us whenever he can, and I’ve found him to be quite —”
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“— safe.” A young girl murmurs hesitantly, ducking under her dark bangs as she averts her green eyes from the camera’s cracked lens to stare at the koi pond beside her in the garden. The fish swim through the water in routine loops, which she tracks in a clear effort not to squirm at being recorded like this. “He’s always… he’s nice. I like being around him.”
“Could you tell me more?” The videographer encourages softly, crouching down so that both themself and the phone are on eye level with her. She glances at them in curiosity, eyes flickering briefly back to the pond before she takes a steadying breath and fixes her gaze onto them with more certainty.
She nods.
Grants them a small, private smile before she speaks; “he’s our cousin, but I think he’s more like our older brother. I think. ‘Cause he took care of us when we were babies, and he still takes care of us when our mom is busy and none of the other, uh, bigger kids or adults wanna help us. And then he plays with us so we aren’t bored, or teaches us how to fight even though the adults say he shouldn’t do that. He says —” she breaks into quiet giggles, smile growing “— he says that they can’t tell him what to do because he’s an heir can-di-date, so he does it anyway just ‘cause he can. He also doesn’t get angry with us if he in-ter-rupt him when he’s doing important clan stuff or training other people.”
“Is that so?” The videographer replies, slightly strained.
“Mhm!” She nods more eagerly, this time. “We used to watch him from the corner while he trained the Kukuru and Akashi, and he’d always pick me up when I asked. So he’s safe and warm and —”
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“— lazy, but strong when he feels like it.” A young girl identical to the previous states, voice ringing clear and unbroken through the otherwise empty dojo despite the drills she was running through with her wooden staff. “He’s stronger than anyone I know!”
The videographer chuffs, clearly somewhat amused by the bold statement. “Stronger than his own clan head and father? Then a special grade sorcerer? Or… Gojo Satoru, the strongest? You know him.”
The girl stills, dropping her stance to face them with an incredulous expression as if to ask them if they’re stupid or being obtuse on purpose. It’s strangely effective, despite her lacking age, and only intensified by the way the afternoon sunlight shines through the shoji walls to reflect on her glasses. Too large for her face. “There’s more than one way to be strong, and just ‘cause he doesn’t have the stupid Ten Shadows doesn’t mean he’s weak. I can’t even use cursed energy, but I’m going to be a first grade sorcerer anyway!”
“You can’t use cursed —!” the videographer startles, jerking the phone in the process. “You have a heavenly restriction… the technique you would’ve had for physical prowess.”
She doesn’t notice the way their tone changes, or maybe she ignores it.
“Mhm! And he said that’s its own kind of strength, even if the rest of jujutsu so-cie-ty doesn’t think it's any good. He’s strong because he doesn’t care about that kind of thing, even though everyone else says that it should be super important to him. The teacher he picked when he was younger had the same thing as me, and he says that man could defeat the whole clan without even trying because of it. Then he picked me to be his student, and, when I said I wanted to be clan head, he even said he’d nom-i-nate me when I was old enough to not be oto-san’s kid anymore. Because if he did it now then oto-san would be clan head after his dad, and that would be really troublesome. He’s super —”
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“— fun!” A white haired teenage boy cheers delightedly, propping his legs on the only desk in the classroom and leaning back in his seat without a care in the world. The sunset leaking through the windows casts everything in a deep orange glow that reflects on his sunglasses and nearly blows out the brightness on the video before the cracked camera manages to adjust. “He was really my first and only friend up until I joined Jujutsu tech, who stuck by me even though I had a tendency to turn into a little brat with him. But I was… lonely, and the first thing he ever did was break through my infinity to pat my head and smile. I was hooked. And I didn’t know how else to get him to talk to me.”
A pause.
“I… wasn’t expecting you to answer so seriously,” the videographer admits.
“Yeah, well,” he begins rocking back and forth in his seat, clearly attempting to look casual but only managing to come across as slightly awkward. “This is the first time we’ve actually talked to each other in a while, and I don’t want to pretend like it’s not a huge deal. He’s… he’s important to me in a way not a lot of others are, just like you. But I’m one of the last people you went to for their opinions on him, and I guess I’ve been wondering if I should’ve paid more attention to what he said when you guys first met forever ago.”
“What did he say?” They respond, slow and wary.
The teenage boy stops rocking, pursing his lips as he folded his arms above his chest. Hesitant. Eventually, he drags his feet off of the table and settles into his seat more appropriately, then, in a move that clearly surprises the videographer, he takes off his sunglasses. Sets them down on the table to meet their eyes, and says; “he told me that people like you are the sort that needs someone to keep an eye on them, because otherwise they’ll fall apart without anyone ever realizing.”
“People like —?!”
“Paragons.” He clarifies. “I guess he wasn’t wrong. He rarely is, even if he’s —”
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“— unbelievably strange.” A broad shouldered man grunts irritability at the cracked camera, the scar on the right corner of his mouth twisting with his scowl. “That’s what I thought of him the day he literally fell into my arms after falling off of the roof, and it’s held true ever since. Are we done now?”
“Why? Too guilty to stay?” The videographer spits. “To look me in the eye?”
“Too bitter to call me by name?” He returns, scowl deepening. “To see me as a human being, and not a goddamned monkey? Whether you’re pissed because of the Gojo brat or the Star Plasma Vessel —”
“Her name was Amanai Riko, you —!”
“— I don’t care.” He finishes, dark blue eyes finding their gaze and holding it. “I’m only here because that kid you’re going around recording everyone’s thoughts and feelings on asked me to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you all…” the videographer hesitates, camera dropping to record the man’s legs instead of his face as they attempt to gather themself. “What about him manages to keep so many people tethered and stable, when we know that all that’s at the end of our marathon as Jujutsu sorcerers is the bodies of our friends in a grave desecrated by what could’ve been. Should’ve been.”
Silence.
“I owe him more than I will ever be able to pay him back,” the man answers, suddenly earnest as he begins explaining himself. “If he’d asked me, all those years ago, to take him with me when I finally got up and left that god forsaken clan, I would’ve said yes. He’s the only part of my previous life that I can say that I miss. Still, he’s… not why I or anyone else have managed to survive as long as we have as alright as we have, and to say that he is would be the same as looking down on us. He helps. I’m not going to tell you that he doesn’t. But the truth is that he only helps because he understands how important it is to discard all meaning and be someone selfish, before you’re someone selfless.”
“I…”
“Maybe you should ask yourself —”
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“ — what do I think about you?”
The videographer takes a shuddering breath, inadvertently shaking the phone in their grip as they do so and blurring their footage of the floor beneath them. When they move, it’s to prop the device up on the desk in front of them and turn the camera around to reveal their face. A teenage boy with long black hair left loose around his shoulders, tangled from what could’ve only been weeks without the necessary care. Lobes stretched around circular black gauges, and purple eyes underlined with dark eyebags that age him several years. He grimaces when he sees himself, as though he hasn’t looked in a mirror for some time, and he makes as if to look away before shaking his head clear of the urge.
He sighs.
Then leans on his elbows against the desk, and stares at himself for a while.
“I think I hated you,” he admits, flinching like he didn’t mean to say it. “I tried not to, and I think I actually managed most of the time. You were Satoru’s friend, then mine and Shoko’s… and I really did enjoy being around you. Knowing you as a person. As a companion. I think it was less that I hated you for you, and really more that I hated what you meant to me as a sorcerer — the way you so flippantly disregarded the order of society and the lives of the weak. Satoru, I could understand. He was born the strongest, and that influences who he is in ways that I knew I would never see the true depths of from the moment I met him. Even when I imagined that the two of us might be equal.”
A pause.
“No,” he frowns, leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. “That’s not it at all. I’m just… blaming him for being himself when it’s me that hasn’t been able to talk to him honestly since Riko. Maybe what I really mean is that you treated us like we were the weak that needed to be protected, and that made me uncomfortable. You knew what I had only realized last August since long before we’d ever met, and probably before you met Satoru either. So when I told you that the strong exist to protect the weak and that society should be made for survival of the weakest, you looked at me with pity not because you disagreed but because you knew what that kind of thinking would make of me.
That’s why you noticed. Why you kept lingering around me after the mission. Why you told Satoru the moment you got the chance to look out for me. Because I was attempting to be a paragon without any measure of selfishness, and that would’ve always found a way to break me no matter how much effort I devoted to my ideals.” He glares at the camera, as though to communicate his frustration and exhaustion to a person that wasn’t there by proxy. “You’re the reason Fushiguro Toji got to live when Amanai Riko died, and then you had the audacity to stand in front of me day after day and tell me that I did good. That I tried. That my kindness meant something, when it couldn’t save a single girl.”
He fought the tears building in his eyes even with another shuddering breath. More a hiss, this time.
“You’re so unfair, seeing through me when I barely knew you and just waiting for me to fall apart at the seams so you could stitch me back up with stronger thread… or tear me apart so I wouldn’t be found a threat. What the hell is wrong with you? Really? All that intelligence that Shoko and Satoru and your family and everyone else I spoke to praised you for, without compassion. Not the barest attempt to warn me, to steer me off this path you’d probably know by the shape of its pebbles or something else equally inane by this point. I don’t know a thing about you, and it feels like no one else does either. Just the shape of whatever you’ll give them. Give me. So screw you, Zenin Naoya.
And thank you, still.”
— Click.
Three.
Two.
One.
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(“And a happy birthday to you, Geto Suguru,” hums the dark haired, feline eyed boy leaning back against the wall of his classmate’s and fellow sorcerer’s dorm room. He’d been planning on dropping off his gift and leaving, but he supposes that he’s earned an easy victory after how troublesome the last year had been for him. It’s not every day a shinobi is reincarnated, and even less that he might encounter a paragon — the “older’s” resentment will live on. But so too will his kindness.
That’s good enough.)