Chapter Text
In those innocent days before children were plunged into the weathered hands of human malice, there existed a story told to soothe their trembling hearts that feared the dark.
It was spoken that the sky was once a vast, hollow void; a cold canvas of nothingness that wept for the darkness of the earth below.
But the universe refused to let the world carry its sorrow in solitude. It opened its palms and let its warmth pour into the open void below. It created a painting of light and scattered celestial dust like seeds that will soon bloom to delicate flowers. And there they hung, these little pinpricks of sugar and salt.
It called them stars. These innocent phenomenas with cores that worked tirelessly, burning hydrogen into helium just to reassure that the dark was not a monster waiting to swallow its children whole, but where a million silver lanterns kept watch.
And in time, the children who once wept beneath those very nights would grow too old to fear them entirely. They will look up and instead of finding a hungry abyss waiting to consume them, they'll see a map instead. They would learn to navigate through it, charting courses across the earth until they dared to build ships of their own, designed to leave the ground behind and sail the endless void between.
It was a reminder to every frightened child that they are never truly abandoned, for no matter how dark the night would become, the sky would always keep the lights burning to guard their sleep.
Suguru Geto has read countless stories of this alienating occurence. Each story left him even more fascinated than the last: how they were able to guide lost sailors home across merciless waters, how entire civilizations had knelt beneath them and built gods from their arrangements, how poets had spent centuries writing love letters to their glow while scientists had dissected their light into brilliant formulas.
Except, he's never once seen them past the confines of these pages.
Suguru has been raised all his life on a tropical beach. Yes, a beach of all things. Which means there's no merciless waters to navigate, no lost sailors, no brilliant formulas, nor any gods built from the sky's arrangements. There's only endless day and a very predictable tide.
But hey, at least it has a great view.
Suguru closes his book, the cover shoving the celestial flowers back into their paper graves. He sets it aside and stands up, raising his arms over his head to stretch to his left and then his right. He glances down at the shaded patch beneath the low-hanging palm tree.
And as expected, the worm is no longer where he left it.
A nearly unnoticeable path in the pristine sand gives it away—a small but lengthy trench leading straight from the tree toward a cluster of smooth basalt rocks near the shoreline.
How it travels so far with such slow speed, Suguru has no clue.
A small smile breaks across his face. "All right," he murmurs to the empty beach. "Where are you hiding today?"
He follows the path to the dark rocks, trying to keep his steps as silent as possible. Suguru leans over the largest boulder and peers down into the narrow crevice.
At first there's nothing but a shadow. But then, a flash of slick, dark purple skin shifts behind a patch of dried sea moss. Two tiny, bulbous eyes pop out, blinking up at him in sudden realization.
Suguru folds his arms and looks down at the cursed spirit with an expression of amusement. "I can see your tail, you know."
The cursed spirit lets out a soft, defeated hiss as it wriggles out from its hiding spot. If a cursed spirit could look embarrassed, this one certainly did. It slithers up the side of the stone and wraps around his forearm. Suguru chuckles, scratching its slick hide.
"You're getting predictable," he says. "You can't hide in a shell that small."
With his companion found, Suguru walks down the coastline, his shoes splashing through rising waves. Moving further ahead into the sea, saltwater pulls at the hem of his yukata.
The worm lifts its head.
He looks at it. It's staring out at the water, where the dimension's edge begins to blur just the slightest.
"What?" Suguru asks.
The worm looks at him.
He looks back out at the horizon, then back down.
"No."
The worm slithers down pointedly until it meets the warm sand and sea, and urges to where the sky and its clouds kiss the water.
"I said no." Suguru starts walking again. "There's nothing out there worth seeing."
The worm doesn't follow. It has many legs, and not one of them take a single step in the direction he's walking. It only huffs—or makes a sound Suguru has decided to interpret as a huff.
He stops in his tracks to look back.
"You like it here," he tells it. "You hide here every day. You clearly have favours for the rocks."
The worm stares, completely unconvinced. But it doesn't stop Suguru from turning back. "Come on, we have a lot to do."
The worm is still for a second before it moves slowly in his direction.
—
Suguru spends the rest of the day drowning himself in mindless activities.
He sweeps. He cooks. He works out. He brushes his long black hair. He sketches the worm. He reads—he's read each book at least twice, and the ones about the celestial flowers, no less a dozen times. He reads two books before the sun hits its peak, and another after. He's painted most of the interior walls in the small cottage at this point, and he's running low on bare space but he manages to find small patches he's missing and fills them in with small drawings.
By the time the sun almost dips below the horizon, but never quite, he's sitting by the window of his room.
It happens every evening, around this time, for as long as Suguru can remember. The sun traverses down toward the coastline, yearning to kiss the sea the way the low clouds do. The sky blushes a soft pink as the sun almost reaches the horizon, but it stops. It hangs there, as if paralyzed by the ocean's beauty. Though, it doesn't seem able to give up, as it stays there for a couple of hours, as if too timid to commit, but also unwilling to give this moment up to the night. But it always ends with it climbing its way home toward noon.
Suguru presses his fingers to the glass.
Before he can start to long for the night the way the sun longs for the sea, Kenjaku's voice finds him. Suguru recalls how he'd described the world outside this dimension: cruel, overrun, bleak, and infiltrated with filthy monkeys. It's a wasteland engulfed by bottomless greed of those parasitic monkeys, and Kenjaku had warned they would eventually hunt Suguru down, trap him in a cage, and break him for their own selfish ends.
But the thought—one that clings to him with the same devotion that drives the sun toward the ocean evening after evening, even if they're destined to never touch—always lingers:
If the world out there is so dead, who is lighting up the celestial flowers?
The cursed spirit wriggles up to him. It lets out a low purr.
"I know." Suguru scratches it. "You'd like the dark, wouldn't you? It does sound quiet."
The worm presses closer.
Tomorrow, the cycle will repeat. He'll sweep, cook, work out, brush his hair, sketch the worm, reread all his books, paint the very little space he has left on the walls. He does this every day, and he'll do it every day. It is a good life, he thinks. In the same way that a well-worn path is good; reliable and known all the way down like the back of his hand.
He just wishes, sometimes, that it went somewhere.
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The thing about Jujutsu High is that it's high up in the mountains, surrounded by dense forests.
Satoru Gojo has always believed the architects and engineers were doing a tad bit too much. The dramatic elevation, the borders upon borders of trees, only for the actual temples to be mediocre.
"Gojo." Comes Jogo's voice, irritated from somewhere to his left. Satoru can imagine the smoke coming out of his volcanic spout on his head. "Can you hurry it up? Move your ass."
"Gimme a second."
Satoru crosses his arms and soaks in the skyline and the mediocre structures below. Past the black fabric of his blindfold, he tracks the intricate perimeter barriers that the higher-ups thought were so impenetrable. It's almost insulting how easy it'd been for them to slip right past them. If he ever took over a mountain fortress like this, the first thing he'd do is tear down all the depressing wood pillar and install some better defences, and of course, decent floor-to-ceiling windows.
"What the hell is taking so long?" Jogo grumbles, stepping up onto the ridge of the roof next to Satoru, darting his eye around the courtyard. "If the sorcerers realize we're inside—"
"Relax, one-eye," Satoru interrupts "If they couldn't detect us getting inside, there's no way those blind old geezers could detect us here."
A low chuckle is heard from behind them as Mahito slides down the roof tiles in a grin. "He's right, Jogo. Relax and enjoy the show. Besides, Gojo is the only one who can bypass the inner boundary anyway. Let him have his moment.
Satoru adjusts the edge of his blindfold with a smirk. "See? Mahito gets it. Now, wait out here and try not to set the roof on fire, Jogo. I'll be back in a flash."
—
Getting in was, if he was being honest, a little disappointing.
The security here is designed even more aggressively than the outside. Any other team would have found it impenetrable.
Any other team that didn't have Satoru Gojo.
At the centre of the room, above a pedestal is the prize: a small wooden box with an iron clasp concealed by talismans. Inside are the fingers of Ryomen Sukuna.
And two sorcerers are standing near the pedestal, guarding it.
One of them rubs his arms. "Is it just me, or is the room freezing today?"
"It's always freezing," the second sorcerer grumbles.
"True. But a little insulation wouldn't kill us," a cheerful voice chimes in from right between them.
"Yes, exactly!" The first nods his head. "A bit of heat wouldn't—"
He freezes, and the other does too. Their eyes dart behind to the pedestal.
Satoru Gojo leans against the pedestal, holding the box with his hand with an infuriating smirk.
The second sorcerer's eyes bulge. "Intrud—"
Before he can even finish his word, with his other hand, Satoru two-finger salutes them goodbye. He shoots straight up to the air, launching back out into the open sky.
The moment he's back on the tiled rooftops, he runs across, and Jogo and Mahito quickly follow behind.
"Can't you just picture me in a massive estate on my own?" Satoru laughs, flashing a bright grin to them. "I mean, I certainly can. Maybe on a resort too, on a massive beach. Ah, look at all the trouble we've caused and it's barely eight in the morning. Gentlemen, today is a very big day."
──── ⁺₊⋆ 𖤓 ⋆⁺₊ ────
"If I ask him, do you think he'll actually listen?"
The cursed spirit, that's currently coiled beside his thigh, opens its eyes to blink up at him. It lets out a faint, bubbling click.
"I don't mean forever," Suguru continues. He looks over at his pile of weathered books, their spines fraying and the once-white pages fading into a yellow. "Just one day. Not even a whole day; just a few hours. If the world out there is so dark because of those filthy monkeys, then someone good has to be lighting it up with those tiny flowers, right?"
He stands up, stops in front of a painted mural of the night sky to trace the patterned velvet with his finger, and swallows hard.
"He'll be here soon," Suguru mutters to the worm, which has crawled over to nudge his ankle. "I just have to ask. Or I'll keep painting until there's no space left."
Right on cue, a dark rift slices through the blue sky. And through the tear steps Kenjaku.
Suguru steps out onto the porch to greet him.
"Suguru," Kenjaku calls out. "Look at you. You look absolutely radiant today. Have you been keeping up with your physical conditioning?"
Suguru bows his head as a filial smile tucks onto his lips. "Yes. Welcome back, Kenjaku."
Kenjaku extends his hand to cup Suguru's cheek, and with his other, he reaches to his forehead and tracks a line across. "The outside world is growing increasingly chaotic, Suguru. Those horrible emotions of those wretched monkeys are practically boiling over out there. I had to spend extra time harvesting these high-grade cursed spirits for you today."
Suguru's stomach twists as he peers into the bag. He can already feel that cloying foul taste coating his tongue. He swallows and clenches his fist behind his long sleeves.
Now. Ask him now.
"So uh," Suguru starts. "I wanted to talk to you about something."
Kenjaku tilts his head. "Go on."
"The celestial flowers. I read about them in the books—" he hesitates. "Well, apparently they appear only when the sky is dark. And as you can see, the sky here never goes dark. So I was wondering if I could maybe leave this place? Only for a few hours, no more than that."
There's a moment where Kenjaku says nothing. He stares at Suguru as seconds tick past.
"Leave?" he repeats. "Oh, Suguru. What a wild imagination you have."
He lets out a long sigh. "The celestial flowers. I should have known those dusty pages written by those apes would fill your head with such dangerous whims. Why would you ever want to look at a sky poisoned by the breath of monkeys? Tell me, Suguru, did those books also mention the cruelty required to survive beneath them?"
"I know it's dangerous," Suguru says. "But I've grown stronger. You said so yourself—"
"You growing strong is meant to keep you safe, not prepare you to be slaughtered," Kenjaku interrupts. "The moment you step past this realm, those parasitic monkeys will tear you apart for their own amusement."
Kenjaku pulls Suguru into a sudden, tight embrace.
"I cannot lose you to their greed," Kenjaku whispers. "Everything I do, I do to keep you whole."
Over Kenjaku's shoulder, Suguru's gaze drifts out to the horizon, where the sun remains suspended over the vast sea, denying the world its twilight once again, and his chest can only ache with longing.
──── ⁺₊⋆ 𖤓 ⋆⁺₊ ────
"No, no no. This is bad, this is very, very bad, This is really bad."
A piece of parchment paper taped onto a wooden torii gate had caught the attention of Satoru's eye. He'd skidded to a halt, and when realization of what was printed on the paper dawned over him, he ripped it off and let out an agonized groan.
He shoves the paper right into Jogo's face. "They completely botched my profile! Look at this jawline! They ruined it! And where is the volume in my hair? It's completely flat!"
Jogo scoffs. "Who cares about your goddamn hair? We're getting chased down!"
"I care!" Satoru shoots back. "If the higher-ups are going to put a price on my head, the least they can do is make me look half-decent!"
The thump of footsteps crescendo through the forest, accompanied by the shouting of sorcerers closing in.
The three thieves continue running, until they reach the darkened veil.
Satoru presses his hand against it, and immediately, electric sparks shoot toward his flesh.
He looks up at the barrier. "Alright, okay, give me a boost past that veil, and I'll hoist you guys up after me."
Jogo's single eye narrows in suspicion. "Give us the box first."
"Wha...?"
Mahito taps his foot as the shouting of the approaching sorcerers grow nearer. "Come on. Hand over the cursed fingers. Then you get your boost."
"After all we've been through?" Satoru presses a hand to his chest and frowns deeply in mock-betrayal. "And you guys still don't trust me. Ouch."
Knowing he's cornered, Satoru lets out a dramatic exhale and tosses the wooden box of Sukuna's fingers into Jogo's hands. He catches it, then cups them together and offers a step. Satoru uses the curse's brute strength to launch himself up, and swings over with ease.
"Alright, brat, the sorcerers are closing in!" Jogo barks, glaring upward. "Reach down and pull us up!"
Satoru looks down at them, and he can't help but let that infuriatingly carefree smirk of his rise.
"I'd love to, really." Satoru reveals the box, having stolen it from Jogo's grip without him noticing. He offers them the same two-finger salute as the one from before. "But as you can see, my hands are kinda full."
Jogo's jaw drops as the volcano on his head violently erupts.
"What?" Jogo screams. "Gojo!"
Satoru scrambles away without another look, hitting the ground on the opposite side of the veil. He doesn't bother with the explosions of fire and curses echoing behind.
"Perfect execution. Ten out of ten," he congratulates himself, throwing the box of fingers into the air and catches it.
Satoru darts deeper into the dense foliage. But he doesn't get far before a wall of five sorcerers—who he presumes are quite advanced in sorcery—drop from the canopy to completely cut off his path.
It's almost comical how fast it happens. Satoru doesn't even fumble with the box. With a lazy wave of his hand, an invisible force deflects all five of them at once. They fly backwards, crashing into tree trunks and bushes.
Satoru laughs, slowing his pace just slightly to glance over his shoulder with a triumphant grin. "Is that all they got? I'm almost insul—"
CRASH
Something incredibly solid slams into him from his right side. The heavy momentum of force throws him off the line he'd been running on. Satoru goes flying sideways, rolling across the dirt and grass of the forest floor, snapping fallen twigs all the while.
He quickly pushes himself up and looks back.
It's a man. Blonde hair, and seemingly around Satoru's height, maybe shorter by about two-three inches. He's broadly built and dressed in a formal suit, topped with a spotted yellow tie and a pair of strange glasses.
"The box," the man orders.
Satoru straightens up, brushing cedar needles off his clothes. "Woah, cool tie. And those glasses too! Where'd you get them? Do they come in blue?"
Spotted-Tie lets out an irritated sigh. His eyes are locked onto the wooden box tucked under Satoru's arm. "The box," he repeats.
Satoru only smirks. "Yeah, see, I'd love to help you out, but it really completes my look. Plus, I don't usually take orders from anyone."
Spotted-Tie lunges forward immediately.
The scramble that follows is less of a refined duel and more of an aggressive game of keep-away.
Spotted-Tie is quick. His hand clamps onto the iron clasp of the box with an unyielding grip of a horse. Satoru yanks it back, but the man doesn't budge an inch. Satoru pulls left; Spotted-Tie wrenches right.
"Let! Go!" Satoru huffs, grabbing a thick, fallen oak branch off the ground with his free hand and swings it to pry the man's fingers off the wood.
Spotted-Tie doesn't let go. He blocks the branch with his arm, and when it comes down again, he grabs it and snaps it apart with his bare hands, shattering the wood into flying splinters.
The two men yank back and forth in this tug-of-war. Satoru tries to leap upward to gain the high ground when he sees a nearby boulder, but Spotted-Tie reads him perfectly. He hooks his shoe around Satoru's ankle, dragging the white-haired thief right back down onto the dirt.
Satoru hits the ground with a loud grunt, and his hand slips, causing the wooden box to slip from both of their grips.
The box launches into the air, landing in the centre of a rotting mossy log that's suspended precariously over a deep, foggy ravine.
The two men freeze.
The log groans.
Both of them look at it, then each other.
Satoru moves quickly, but Spotted-Tie follows just as fast. The box is balancing so precariously that one small movement might just cause it to tip, but neither man backs down. Satoru lunges forward, his fingers finding the lid of the box, but Spotted-Tie's hand finds the iron clasp at the same time.
"Come on, buddy," Satoru huffs, flashing a strained grin as he tries to pull it toward himself. "Let's be reasonable here. If you keep pulling like that, you're going to seriously crease that beautiful suit."
Spotted-Tie isn't fazed. In fact, his grip only tightens. "Give it up."
"Never!" Satoru yanks backward.
Spotted-Tie pulls forward.
The log snaps.
The gunshot that rings turns out to be the shattering of the wood, splintering in two pieces. In a fit of panic, Satoru hugs the box with both arms as he's falling.
Spotted-Tie on the other hand, catches another dangling tree clinging to the cliffside, using his shoes to anchor himself to the rock of the cliff.
Satoru, however, with all his fingers occupied on the box, has nothing to catch himself with.
He plummets straight down with a strangled screech.
When he hits the ground, the impact causes him to tumble over and over, sliding backwards, sideways, forwards, the other sideways, before slamming hard into the base of a massive stone barrier.
"Ow," Satoru groans. He's flat on his back. But after a brief second, he recovers and sits up to check on his box. Seeing that it's still intact, he breathes a sigh of relief.
Up above, through the thick mist, he can hear Spotted-Tie trying to find a path down safely, as well as the shouting of the other five sorcerers finally catching up.
"He's down there! Find a way around!"
Satoru needs to move fast. He's on his feet, placing his hand along the stone wall for a bit of support because, well, he did just fall down a literal cliff and managed to stay intact.
But instead of a solid rock, his fingers, and then his entire arm, slides through the stone.
He can't even process what's happening. He's completely lost balance. Satoru falls forward, tumbling face-first into another fall.
He lets out a bloodcurdling screech, but luckily, this time, the fall isn't nearly as bad as the first. It's short-lived, and rather soft.
He groans and blinks, expecting to feel the sharp pain of rock and cedar pressing into his flesh. But instead, his fingers sink into something soft, dry, and warm.
He blinks. Sand?
Satoru quickly sits up. He coughs out the grains of sand in violent hacks that had gotten into his mouth. He rubs his face, and the second he looks up, his breath catches somewhere in his throat.
The ravine is gone. Above him, is a vast sky of azure blue streaked with wispy white clouds, topped with a blazing sun that hangs directly above. There's a distinct scent of saltwater, and the heat can only belong to the tropics.
He lowers his gaze from the sky, and sees the ocean and its thousand glimmering shards just a few yards away.
Satoru stands up, brushing the sand off his clothes. The shock dissolves into amusement, and a slow, cocky smirk spreads across his face.
"Well, well. What do we have here—"
──── ⁺₊⋆ 𖤓 ⋆⁺₊ ────
DONK
Suguru's chest heaves in ragged gasps as he continues to grip the wooden handles tight.
Just moments ago, he'd been trying to force down the foul taste of the cursed spirit Kenjaku had fed him, before a bloodcurdling screamed pierced into the paradise.
He'd immediately dashed outside to see what was going on, expecting... well, he didn't know what exactly he was expecting. All he knows that it wasn't this, a white-haired creature sprawled on the sand.
Suguru hadn't known what to do. There was no way an intruder could break through the sky. This was a place meant to protect him after all, not for creatures to be raining down on him.
The worm must have sensed his fear, as immediately, it stretched its jaw to regurgitate a formidable weapon Suguru had practiced with for years.
And with the three-sectioned red staff, he hits the intruder hard on the back of his head.
The white-hair's knees buckled instantly as he faceplanted right back into the sand, knocked completely out cold.
The red staff trembles slightly in Suguru's grip as he stands over the unmoving body. Then he lowers the weapon inch by inch, his eyes wide as he continues to stare.
A few hours ago, when Kenjaku had left to go to the real world again, Suguru distinctly remembers wishing with everything in him that his repetitive routine would cease. He'd just wanted a change of pace, a new book maybe, or a slightly different tide.
He hadn't exactly planned on a giant, blindfolded seagull falling from the sky.