Chapter Text
There isn’t a time that Gojo recalls when you don’t regard him with animosity.
The first time you meet, you’re in your last year of elementary school, and he’s in his last year of middle school. You’re initially curious about his white hair and blue eyes, but one conversation quickly makes your impression of him melt into a puddle of disappointment. From the way your beloved big brother described Gojo Satoru, you had expected him to be a prince of some sort.
However, Gojo is only a teenage boy—brash, loud, a little (a lot) sweaty—not at all like how you imagined him.
From then on, you treated him like a disdainful housecat would.
The second time around, you were just a year older. He was in his first year of high school, and you were in your first year of middle school. From how Suguru described you to him, Gojo thought you would be a lot shier or have the delicate sensibilities of an adolescent girl. Suguru told Gojo that whenever Auguru was home, you’d make sure to prepare his favorite snacks and spend time with him. Apparently, you’d tried watching many shounen anime just because you wanted to connect with your older brother.
The you that Gojo encounters is in stark contrast to the you that Suguru talks about. Gojo thought he was better prepared to speak to you now, armed with an arsenal of information about Dragon Ball and his signature good looks, but unfortunately, Gojo is met with bared fangs and pointy claws; he really doesn’t understand why his best friend’s little sister hates him so much.
That summer, Gojo invites Suguru to spend his vacation at the Gojo summer villa—more aptly realized as an entire separate grounds and estate from their main compound in Saitama—and Suguru brings you along for the hell of it. That, and you didn’t want to be left alone with your parents for three months, so you pestered Suguru until he agreed to ask Gojo if you could come as well. (“No” wasn’t really an option; if you truly wanted something, it was difficult for Suguru to deny you of it. Suguru remembers scoffing when Satoru replied: “You might as well invite the rest of your family too.”)
The villa, henceforth referred to as the complex, was massive. Engawas that seemed to stretch on and on, a garden of cultivated bonsai and water lilies completely surrounded by the rest of the compound, and identical rooms separated by paper sliding doors that made the already mazelike building furthermore tricky to navigate.
You spend that summer tugging on Suguru’s sleeves and the hem of his shirt, occasionally Satoru’s as well if your brother wasn’t being responsive enough for your taste. They always seemed to be getting up to something, and you felt lonely in the winding hallways of the Gojo summer complex when your brother and his annoying friend weren’t around. Nights of sleepovers between them usually meant there wasn’t enough space for you on those sprawling tatami mats, large as they were.
There were no girls in the compound, not girls of your age. There were quiet workers who lingered beyond each turn in the hall, always within view yet never within reach. You were stuck with two troublesome boys. Whenever you complained, Suguru always made sure to remind you that you had insisted on coming along.
After a few weeks, you didn’t mind as much. You never had to bike when Satoru and Suguru had theirs, and you never had to worry about falling asleep in the living room when one of them would lug you back to yours. Best of all, whenever either of them got a free popsicle from the one they’d eaten, they’d always give the extra to you.
However, some of their habits annoyed you, like how they ganged up on you during hide-and-seek or constantly competed over the most trivial things. You served as a judge, mediator, and referee, and you didn’t get a single yen of payment for your hard work, and the prize popsicles were hardly making do.
Towards the middle of the summer, when the longest days stretch into the sky, your parents discover where you’ve been hiding from them. Suguru is no golden child; your role was that of his successor. They somehow drive out to the Gojo complex and pressure the doorman to let them in, but the Gojo clan’s employees are vetted, so your parents are effectively locked outside of the compound. Suguru goes to reason with them (sparing you their wrath) and leaves you with Satoru. You do little but sit beside him on the engawa, staring at the fireflies floating through the air because you’re scared you’ll be punished and even more afraid of Suguru taking the punishment for you.
Satoru, a boy with a tendency to meddle, sneaks glances at your unflinchingly empty gaze. The pallid glow of fireflies reflects in your watery eyes, and he clears his throat. You don’t notice, too fixated on the mistake you made when you decided to abscond with Suguru rather than your original plan to buy a one-way Shinkansen ticket to Hokkaido.
Satoru taps your shoulder, and you still do not notice. He grunts before scooting closer, awkwardly putting his arm across your shoulders. “Stop crying. Me and Suguru won’t let your shitty folks take you away.”
Finally, you look up at him, and his first instinct is to make fun of you for how pathetic you look. Dripping nose, teary eyes, a contorted expression from the effort it took you not to burst out crying—the effort is ultimately fruitless when you throw yourself at Satoru and bury your face into his shirt, wiping your tears and snot all over its fabric.
He makes a noise of irritation, his hand briefly moving away from your shoulder before he gives you another tentative hug. Satoru’s not very good at comforting others. You sob, small hands clenching fistfuls of his tee as you blubber on and on about how you don’t want to go home. He cringes and hesitantly rubs small circles between your shoulder blades.
“Seriously, you don’t have to go home unless you want to,” Satoru hushes reassuringly. You continue to blubber but begin to quiet down, mumbling through your tears as you wipe your nose on his shirt. His face contorts into a funny expression, but you don’t get to make a snarky comment since you are busy wiping your snot against his sleeve.
Satoru’s lack of siblings had never really bothered him. He was the prodigious first (and only!) son of the Gojo clan, and he had no one to fight for superiority or inheritance. Even if he had siblings, he doubted they would be able to put up much of a fight for either of them due to his outstanding cursed techniques. Last year, when he first met you, he was glad that he didn’t have a younger sister.
Then again, he supposed you treated him very differently from the way you treated your brother.
Now, even as he has to whisper hesitantly sweet nothings while he rubs another circle between your shoulder blades, even as your tears and snot drip down your face onto his clothes, he supposes that he doesn’t mind having a little sister as much as he thought he would. Satoru doesn’t mind when you insist on riding his bicycle because Suguru doesn’t pedal hard enough, and he doesn’t mind when you lodge yourself between the two boys during their sleepovers.
He casts his gaze over the courtyard’s walls, the sun's edge still lighting up the sky in crimson streaks. The red is fading into a gentle blue, and the light from the fireflies is a neon hue in contrast to the warm backlighting from inside the compound. Satoru rubs your back and shoulders until your quiet sobs become sniffles.
“We can have as much ice cream as you want, and we can watch those movies you like from… from Studio Jiggly? Dribbly?” For Satoru’s ignorance, he’s rewarded with a sullen giggle.
When Suguru comes back, there is a weary smile on his face. It is weary, but it is present, and you crawl from Satoru to Suguru, stumbling over your feet as you start crying again. At best, Suguru negotiated your now-allowed stay, and at worst, your parents would have dragged you from the compound with their hands.
It looks like Suguru’s golden tongue is not only for sweet-talking you into taking the last bite of your ice cream.
Summer, one summer of your youth spent in the meandering hallways of a shinden-zukuri style complex, pursuing the shadows of two boys whose distance from yourself only seemed to grow wider the harder you chased. Your feet stomped against bamboo and tatami mats, and loud shouts echoed the youth you could not feel within the confines of your home.
In Satoru’s summer home, you found freedom.