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"Ijichi, hang back a sec."
The gulp is purely reflexive. It's hard not to recall one's school days at the hands of Gojo Satoru, especially when one's entire career path has been dictated by the man's consistent threats. The memories still awaken a primordial fear in Ijichi, the likes of which could only originate in something as trite as early youth.
He moves to shut the passenger door of the sleek new Mercedes as Miss Takeda settles in, fingers now suffering from a light twitch. A glance at Gojo-san makes sweat bead at his brow, because the curve of that smirk has never meant anything good for Ijichi. Nevertheless, he approaches in response to Gojo-san's curling finger, stepping closer to the garage door and leaving a decent amount of space between his cheek and Gojo's considerable wingspan.
"Aw, come on— I'm not gonna smack ya! Come here, let me whisper a secret in your ear."
Ijichi is pretty certain his features have been schooled to a fault, nothing but professional neutrality and a hint of curiosity, to be polite. Despite this, it's not unlikely that Six Eyes can sense the trepidation in his very bones, no matter how deeply Ijichi tries to bury it. He would scarcely weep, were Gojo-san never to converse one-on-one with him again.
Still, he obeys out of pure desire to expedite his punishment, whatever it might be. He steps closer. Infinitesimally.
"Man, you're not fun," Gojo-san pouts. Ijichi refrains from thinking of the series of events that must converge for a grown man to feel as free to whine as Gojo-san so often does. "Fine! Here—"
In half a second, Gojo Satoru has put his lips to Ijichi's ear, so close that what used to be budding apprehension has now turned into full-blown fear. Ijichi is one hair's breadth away from seeing sounds and hearing colors. And he knows it's about to get much worse.
"You have precious cargo in that car. Now, because I don't want her asking what's taking so long, I'll be brief," Gojo-san says quietly (nobody is around to hear him). "Your job is to bring her back. You may not think that's your job, but I'm telling you it is. Drive her there, drive her back, in one piece. Capiche?"
Ijichi would nod, were he not beyond certain that doing so would make the skin of his ear brush against Gojo-san's lips. Death would be preferable.
"Ijichi, I'm being serious. Ask anyone— don't ask her! But ask anyone. If she doesn't come back, things will spiral pretty bad. And by things, I mean me! Okay?"
Ijichi says nothing of the fact that asking him to guard Miss Takeda is like asking a dormouse to guard an elephant. No insult to Miss Takeda intended. Or to Ijichi himself, really. He knows what his skills are and where his strengths lie, and it isn't in guarding S-grade sorcerers whom he's seen take an atomic bomb's worth of damage and walk away somewhat inconvenienced.
Alas, he nods his assent. He can sense the truth in the undercurrent of hysteria that Gojo-san's words betrayed, and he does not want to find out what Gojo Satoru looks like when he's even less hinged than usual.
.
.
.
Ijichi knows that his promise held no real weight to Gojo. He knows it was a platitude of sorts— something he was under no obligation to provide in earnest, should the need for intervention truly arise. And still, his stomach turns at the prospect of having to tell Gojo Satoru that precious cargo is now missing.
Drive her there, drive her back, in one piece.
Would it be better if there were at least a piece to drive back? Any piece? Some kind of proof that Miss Takeda did not just vanish off the face of the Earth, along with the cursed spirit looming over the mountain?
Ijichi has never seen one that large, and its size was only half the reason his spine bent with the tremors of aftershock as he dry heaved by a pine tree. The utter silence of the spirit's movement played on a sinking loop inside Ijichi's mind, begging analysis. Something that big hiding so well would've terrified even some of his more experienced colleagues, and while Ijichi is terrified, he is also a man with excruciating awareness of the fact that the curse was simply not that strong.
Yes, he saw it sink its spindly arms through Miss Takeda's abdomen, and he saw the blood dribbling down her chin, but that made no sense. The curse was simply not that strong.
Ijichi-san. Do be careful that Ayame doesn't overexert herself. It's her first solo mission since Shoko cleared her for active duty.
Geto Suguru's quiet guidance trickles to the forefront of his mind, the polite words and always-there honorific providing differentiation from Gojo Satoru's brash, blunt threat. At the time, Ijichi thought nothing of it. It was simply a comrade looking out for his own, an uncomplicated gesture of concern spoken off-handedly inside the otherwise deserted breakroom on a random Wednesday. He doesn't think he'd ever seen Geto Suguru occupying the common space before then, not since their school days. It was mostly frequented by Ijichi and his fellow assistant managers— in other words, secondary staff.
He may be starting to see, albeit much too late, that Geto-san's words were just as much a threat as Gojo-san's, and that what he'd believed to be a gesture of concern was a deliberate, veiled warning.
You may not think that's your job, but I'm telling you it is.
What a blessing it is to realize that he's been twice cornered by Special grades with clear and concise instructions, and he failed to follow them. Did Gojo-san attempt to reinforce an idea he'd failed to grasp from Geto-san? Were they actively discussing his stupidity in real time? Should he even bother returning to the school?
If his options are a. get eaten by Geto-san's immeasurably awful arsenal of curses or b. get blinked out of existence via primary colors, he'd rather lie down by the mossy lakeside and breathe his last breath in only relative terror. But he can't. He can't abandon his station at a time like this, even if sounding the alarm will very likely cost him everything: his job, his friends, his entire life and possibly the afterlife, too.
His fingers dial a familiar number one by one, trying to prolong the inevitable as he attempts to recall what it was like to breathe freely, just shy of twenty minutes ago. It is a midsummer evening and Ijichi's teeth are chattering.
Gojo Satoru answers on the second ring.
"I better hear that you're stopping for Kikufuku and you want to ask my favorite flavor," Gojo's sing-song voice comes through the speaker. It's met with charged silence so heavy it could crush Ijichi where he stands. He thinks it favorable to what he's about to endure.
He opens and closes his mouth a few times, a performance reminiscent of a flopping fish about to be speared and roasted.
"Ijichi. Talk."
Gojo Satoru's timbre has fallen so steeply, Ijichi would readily believe a different person has intercepted the call— a somewhat psychotic, certifiably murderous person. Ijichi's only saving grace is that Gojo cannot teleport from Tokyo to Sendai. He can't. It's too far.
Isn't it?
A sudden pressure bears down on the tree tops surrounding him, one he feels at the back of his skull with bruising tenderness.
"Whew— that was a doozy! Ijichi, could you pass the water?"
Ijichi opens his eyes to bewildering salvation: Miss Takeda stands before him, nary a hair out of place, breathing steadily while presenting no overt injuries. She is also — puzzlingly — smiling, drenched in cursed spirit residuals.
And since Gojo is on speakerphone, he too can hear Ijichi's cry of relief in crisp harmony as it echoes across the lake and sinks into the dense forestland surrounding them. A few beats pass as Ijichi gathers his bearings in silence.
"… Ayameeee," Gojo-san drawls, voice carrying into the quiet night, "Is Ijichi finally losing it? I gotta say, I thought it'd happen a lot sooner!"
Miss Takeda glances towards the phone, Ijichi notes, with evident displeasure coloring her features. She gestures for him to hand over the now-dented smartphone (is the phone weak or is Ijichi's grip strong?) and shoots him an apologetic glance as she puts it to her ear. His heart flips momentarily, eyes drawn to Miss Takeda's hand.
"What are you talking about, Satoru?" she sighs into the phone.
"I thought he was calling to tell me you died or something! Which I can see— or, hear— that you haven't, which is good," the words are punctuated by a not-hysterical-whatsoever laugh. "So, what's up? Has our cute junior finally gone insane?"
"Oh! Well, I'm not sure how much time has passed here. I got dragged into a pocket dimension. He probably thought I was in trouble," she explains patiently, obviously ignoring Gojo's dig at Ijichi.
"Awesome!" Ijichi gets the feeling that Gojo-san does not think that that's awesome, if his shrill tone is anything to go by. "And are you guys stopping by Sendai airport by any chance…"
Truth be told, he doesn't hear much of the following conversation, partly because Miss Takeda steps away for some privacy, but mostly because his ears have taken on a strange ringing quality since he spotted the missing appendage on her left hand.
Drive her there, drive her back, in one piece.
He is so very, wholly, thoroughly— fucked.
.
.
.
"Ijichi, hang back a sec."
Once again, the gulp is purely reflexive. The backdrop for Ijichi's torment has been swapped this time, from the school's garage to the hallway leading to Principal Yaga's office, where he was headed with the intention to provide a mission report. Gojo-san seems to have other plans.
However, this time, a blessed voice cuts into the space between Ijichi's fragile existence and Gojo-san's noticeably untethered posture, looming dauntingly at the end of the hall like a vengeful spirit. And— is he floating?
"Satoru."
Miss Takeda's clipped tone draws a long-suffering whine from The Strongest. Ijichi pauses mid-step, allowing her to take the lead towards the pending disaster the same way a child allows their older sibling to handle outsize threats; he glimpses the furrowed brow and quirked lip on Miss Takeda's face as she passes him and he works to suppress the flicker of joy budding in his chest. Safe.
"Whaaat? I just wanna talk to him," Gojo-san grumbles, because he is an overgrown toddler. But he does, Ijichi notes, significantly deflate as Miss Takeda reaches him and places a gentle hand on his chest— the same one that was, up until this morning, missing a finger. Ijichi feels the inexplicable need to rip his eyes away from the intimate gesture. Looking upon Gojo Satoru as he completely melts before another is akin to witnessing the proceedings inside a sacred temple; no one has to tell Ijichi to avert his eyes, he does it out of a sense of deep-seated propriety.
"Everything went fine. There's nothing else to discuss," Miss Takeda veers pointedly. Then, there is a pause in her speech. Eyes firmly planted upon Principal Yaga's door, Ijichi has only his peripheral vision to rely on, but even so, his ears don't betray him. The quiet sound of lips on skin briefly turns the tips of Ijichi's ears bright red.
"Where's your ring, baby?"
And not for the first time in the past twenty-four hours, Ijichi's eyes nearly outgrow their sockets. There is so much information for him to process just from those few words that it feels like he's struggling with grasping domain expansion all over again. Just plain gibberish and concepts too far out of his grasp and much beyond any natural talent he might've had. Gojo-san just referred to Miss Takeda as— he blushes to think— baby. A term of endearment that leaves no room for questioning the nature of their relationship, which Ijichi had always thought was extremely close but never romantic. He isn't proud to admit that all his fellow managers' gossip regarding Tokyo High's elite sorcerers was a topic of interest for him also, not least of all because he grew up alongside these people. Yet not once did Ijichi contribute his own observations to the group chat (there is a group chat), because there weren't any to submit. Everything appeared perfectly normal. Until now, that is.
His excitement is short-lived. As it stands, he isn't likely to make it back to his colleagues in order to announce the news, owing to the other mind-boggling word Gojo-san used. Ring.
With horrifying lucidity, he realizes the gravity of thinking he was saved by Dr. Ieiri's swift intervention this morning. The finger Miss Takeda had lost and then regrown was her ring finger, and apparently, there was a ring meant to be on it. Which there wasn't, because Ijichi would have noticed. And despite Miss Takeda's quiet reassurance that she would not reveal to Gojo-san that she'd lost a finger, Ijichi has no idea whether she was still in possession of the ring. A ring.
Ijichi moves the word around in his mind, turning it this way and that, until it clanks against his skull with the fury of a thousand suns.
An engagement ring?!
He allows the panic to engulf him, unmitigated by anything resembling reason or prayer. The exchange between his upperclassmen continues to unfold, disaster-by-proxy.
"It's around my neck. Why?"
"Just wondering. You don't usually wear it like that."
"I don't wear it out on missions. Gets messy. And it's delicate, I don't want to damage it."
"Yeah?" Ijichi isn't proud to admit his ears get even redder at the inflection in Gojo-san's tone, the intimacy dripping from it. "Do you want ano—"
"No, Satoru, I do not want any other ring. The one you gave me is perfect."
"I was thinking something along the lines of one more. You know, something tougher—"
"Satoru."
Unwilling (and unable) to handle any more of their lovey-dovey banter, Ijichi excuses himself directly into Yaga's office. Frankly, it could have been the door to the ninth circle of hell and he would've skipped right on through to safety. Yaga fixes him with a nondescript stare that Ijichi has come to learn means he's thinking of sweet retirement.
.
.
Back in the hallway, unbeknownst to Ijichi yet concerning him all the same, Gojo Satoru's eyes hone in on a crucial piece of evidence neither him nor Miss Takeda has considered.
"Baby… why is one of your nails teeny-tiny?" Satoru asks, pulling her left hand closer and holding it up for inspection.
"Huh?"
"This one," he says, delicately extending the appendage in question. "Suspiciously, the one attached to a finger that used to have a little scar on the second knuckle. Last I checked, reverse cursed technique doesn't heal scars. Got anything to say about that?"
"Uh… well—"
"Well?" he presses, inching ever-so-slightly closer, blindfold doing nothing to ease the intensity of his stare.
"Mmhm, exactly," his fiancée nods solemnly. "Well."
"Huh?! What do you mean, well?"
A couple of beats pass in complete silence.
"Ijichi!"
.
.
Inside Principal Yaga's office, the man in question wonders if it's not too late to make his end-of-life arrangements as his fingers tap away at the screen. The assistant manager group chat lights up within seconds of his delivered text:
Gojo-san and Takeda-san are engaged.
The responses pour in maniacally, but Ijichi doesn't have any time to skim them. He's overdue an explanation for bursting into Principal Yaga's office and already late to an appointment with a funeral home director. Maybe late summer would be a good time for the wake, after the busy season comes to a close. He hopes Dr. Ieiri wouldn't be opposed to embalming him—
"Ijichi, I'll be waiting out here for our talk!" comes a muffled voice from beyond the door, followed by swift reprimand from Gojo-san's better half.
—if there is anything left of him to bury, that is.