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Curiosity be damned, he shouldn’t have listened to Nobara. I have something to show you, she said, you’ll be interested. Yuuji is hardly ever interested in anything and thought she was talking out of her ass, especially after she refused to elaborate. Maybe trying to keep him there for a little longer, gone soft with old age but with enough pride left to be unable to speak it out loud.
Damn her.
Damn him, for listening to her.
He is not interested in this. He wants to go back to the refuge of his solitude and never come out until it’s Nobara’s funeral, out of regret for never speaking to her again.
“He has everything. Limitless, Six Eyes. Same techniques. Same face, too. I suppose the Gojo Clan keeps it inside,” Nobara drawls, eyeing him from the corner of her eye. “Yuuta went through a lot of trouble to keep him hidden, and it was no trouble at all to undo it all after his death. Everyone will know soon.”
Yuuji licks his lips, unable to take his eyes off the white-haired figure down the balcony. “Why did you bring me here?”
“He even has the same name,” Nobara murmurs, leaning on the rail as she turns to face him.
“Of course he does,” Yuuji says, hollow. “Why did you bring me here?”
The silence between them is only broken by the birdsong echoing through the fancy garden. The child does not turn to face them, even though he must surely know they’re there.
“I would’ve told you before if you’d bothered to show your face—”
“Why would I want to know?” Yuuji counters and manages to tear his eyes off the child to meet Nobara heads on, refusing to soften when faced with the lines on her face age has given her. “So, there’s another Limitless user. And with the Six Eyes, too! How lucky we are to have another person to exploit. I don’t care to know anything about it.”
“He’s ten years old,” Nobara says, ignoring every single word Yuuji just said. “I thought you might want to meet him, help him along the way. He’s not an easy one, you know, and he has big shoes to fill. He’ll have a harder time than necessary if he keeps refusing help.”
“Let him, then,” Yuuji sighs and backs off the balcony. “There’s nothing any of us can teach him.”
Nobara scoffs, following after him as he strides off. “You know that’s not true.”
“He’ll have a hard time either way. It comes with the package.”
“But you can help him—”
“I cannot,” Yuuji empathizes, quickly walking down the stairs and into the lobby of the too-big house. “I’m surprised you can keep up at your old age. Maybe you should take it easy and—”
Something hits him in the back of his head. One of her slippers. Yuuji stops short, feeling cold. Turning back to her, she has the other slipper in hand, ready to throw it at him, and he can’t even muster up the slightest bit of amusement at the sight.
Yuuji exhales heavily and closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. After a few seconds, he drops his hand and says, “I don’t want to be a part of any of this, Nobara. Not even for melancholy’s sake. You know this.”
A beat of silence.
“I imagine our teacher would have benefited greatly from having someone like you at his side growing up.”
“Yeah?” Yuuji asks rhetorically, huffing out a laugh, and turns back to the entrance. “I imagine he would have benefited from not having the weight of his name on his shoulders. But what do I know?”
And with an absent wave, he leaves her behind, thankful that she doesn’t try to follow after him again. It’s bewildering that she thought he’d take all of this lightly. That she thought he’d become some sort of teacher, especially for that kid. After all this time, after everything, why would she bring him here? Why would he let her? He’d never visited the Gojo state before and couldn’t recognize it, but of course she was scheming something. That’s what Nobara does: Yuuji visits and watches as she makes up some new plan to get him to stay. Or, to prevent him from disappearing for years at a time.
Using a carbon copy of their teacher is a new low. Expecting him to get attached to the kid just because of it makes him think she might be dealing with some sort of early on-set dementia. Maybe he should suck it up and visit more often, after all. She must be feeling lonely now that Maki and Yuuta are gone, but he refuses to play a part in any of this.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, leaning on one of the metal poles of the gate. It’s a big one, the Gojo state. Bigger than the Zen’in one, looks like. As he takes out the cigarette pack from his pocket, he thinks that there are not nearly enough people in the clan to utilize all those grounds, even sixty-eight years after Gojo’s death.
“Are you leaving already?”
Yuuji pauses, cigarette in his mouth, and slowly releases his thumb from the lighter. “Huh?”
The miniature of Gojo Satoru stomps up to him until there’s only a couple feet of distance between them, a frown marring his face. “Why are you leaving?” He asks accusingly.
Yuuji blinks and swallows his heart back down to his chest. “Go back to your lessons, kid.”
“What lessons?” The child grouches derisively, crossing his arms on his chest. He’s the perfect picture of an angered child; the only thing he has left is to stomp his feet to the ground. It’s a strange sight. Gojo’s anger was always more of a cold, tense thing, and the more he tried to hide it, the worse it got. Seeing someone with his face be so bewilderingly, genuinely expressive makes Yuuji feel almost dizzy. “Why are you leaving?”
“I was only visiting,” Yuuji sighs, cursing himself for lingering, and takes the cigarette out of his mouth and back into the pack. “The visit is now over.”
“But you didn’t meet me.”
“I wasn’t here to meet you.” Yuuji zips up his hoodie and takes a step back.
“Yes, you were. No one comes here for anything else,” The kid counters, tilting up his chin. “I’m Satoru.”
“I know,” Yuuji murmurs, hands fisted inside his pockets.
“And you’re Yuuji.”
“I surprisingly know that too.”
The kid pouts. “You’re nicer in my dreams.”
“Really,” Yuuji says mildly. Was he this creative as a child, too? He can understand some of his grandfather’s grumpiness if he was. “Did Nobara send you, then? You can tell her this won’t work either.”
“I’ve been dreaming about you since forever. Since before forever,” He says, amusingly serious in a way only children can be.
“What are you talking about?” Yuuji distractedly takes a step back and eyes the grounds behind him, hoping to see someone searching for the new pillar in their world.
A weight slams against him. Arms wrap around him tightly, fingers clawing at his back. Yuuji’s heart stutters inside his chest, manifesting itself for the first time in decades. He blinks down at the tuft of white, at the face that stays stubbornly hidden on his torso before the kid digs his chin into Yuuji’s belly and glares up at him.
“I’ve been waiting for you since before forever.” As hard as he’s trying not to think about it and remove himself from the situation, he really does look exactly like what Yuuji imagines Gojo looked like when he was young. His eyes are the same. Everything else can be dismissed with the age difference, but not his fucking eyes. That’s the worst part. “And you’re like a ghost. No one talks about you and you’re never anywhere I can see, so I thought—Why would you leave without me?”
Uncovered, too. Too big and too bright in his small face, framed by delicate white lashes, they’re the first thing anyone can notice. It almost aches to look into them, though Yuuji doesn’t know if that’s a long-forgotten effect of the Six Eyes or if it’s his memories that burn him. They must hurt. Yuuji isn’t something nice to look at even for an average person; for someone burdened by the Six Eyes, he can’t imagine it’s anywhere near pleasant.
Yuuji stares, lungs burning for breath. “What?”
The glare intensifies, but Yuuji knows that face even after more than sixty years. That glare means nothing when he can see his lips tremble, can hear the waver in his voice. “What’s so hard to understand? I know you. You know me. You’ll stay.”
It’s a strange mix of emotions, what he’s feeling. The young apparition of his high school teacher thrown at him without a warning, the implication behind his words. Body cold, mind wavering, Yuuji wants to leave. Still, he can’t help but feel amused. Ten years old, Nobara said. Of course any version of Gojo Satoru would be this kind of bratty.
“You know me?” Yuuji echoes, lips unwillingly twitching.
“Yes.”
Life keeps surprising him even now. Yuuji exhales harshly through his nose and closes his eyes, turning his face to the sun. One of the arms hanging loosely by his sides comes up, and without looking, he rests his hand on the top of the kid’s head, feeling the soft hair between his fingers.
When he opens his eyes and meets that eternally familiar gaze, the glare is gone, replaced by a wonder that shouldn’t be as endearing as it is.
“Hasn’t anyone ever taught you how to say please, Satoru-chan?”
Satoru’s eyes impossibly widen further, and he tightens his arms around Yuuji, whispering, “What?”
“If you want me to stay, you should ask politely,” Yuuji says, patting his head.
“If I say please, you’ll stay?”
“Maybe,” Yuuji allows.
“Huh? But that’s not fair,” Satoru whines, dropping his arms to cross them over his chest.
Yuuji mirrors his stance. “Life isn’t fair. Go on.”
The kid pouts, but after a long beat of silence, he says miserably, “Please, stay. I want you to stay.”
“Hm. Did Nobara send you to talk to me?”
“Who’s that?” Satoru scrunches up his face, stupidly endearing.
Yuuji finds himself unwittingly softening. He can’t help it. He’s a cute kid. He’s Gojo Satoru. Of course he’s bratty and endearing. Even without his talk of dreaming and waiting for him, Yuuji would have found himself in the same place. Nobara knew what she was doing.
Damn her.
Damn it all.
“Kugisaki-san.”
“The lady with the eyepatch?” Satoru guesses cluelessly. “I don’t know her. Why would she send me to you? Is she your friend? Or do you hate her? If you hate her, then I hate her too. What’s she even doing here?”
He huffs, hiding his laugh. “She’s my friend. She wants me to help you.”
“Oh. Then she’s fine, I guess.”
Yuuji sighs, observing him intently. Satoru straightens under his gaze, blinking innocently as his smile keeps getting bigger and bigger, until it’s like a beam of sunlight sent to make him dizzy.
Fuck, he thinks. Well, it’s not like he’s busy these days. Perhaps some temporary entertainment will do him good, and it’ll take Nobara off his back. He’s old enough to know how to avoid getting attached, and if he plays this right, there’ll exist a Gojo Satoru without the weight of the world in his shoulders. A job well done, something to satisfy him in the long years that await him.
“Don’t your eyes hurt?” Yuuji asks curiously.
Satoru wavers, and the light dims. “What?”
“Your eyes,” Yuuji repeats patiently. “They hurt, don’t they?”
“Of course they do,” Satoru frowns, shifting in his feet.
Yuuji gentles his tone. “No one taught you how to cover them?”
“I don’t like it,” The kid says, lower lip jutting out. “It’s weird and uncomfortable, and I hate it.”
“The pain will only get worse the older you get, at least until you master your abilities.”
“So?”
“You wouldn’t rather be in debilitating pain over being just a little uncomfortable, would you?”
Satoru raised his chin. “Maybe I would. You don’t know.”
Yuuji does know.
“If you want me to stay, you’ll begin covering them,” Yuuji says, wondering where he could get the fabric Gojo used in his time. “I’ll even do it for you if you want.”
The kid’s mouth drops with outrage. “That’s not fair!”
“Life isn’t fair,” Yuuji says mildly, straightening up and shoving his hands back in his pockets.
“You said that you’d stay if I said please!”
“I said maybe,” Yuuji corrects. “It’s your choice.”
He stomps his feet. Yuuji swallows down his laugh and waits.
“But everything goes dull when I cover them,” Satoru says, looking up at him balefully.
“Even your pain, huh?” Yuuji says, unwavering, though he can understand that if you’ve always seen things so brightly, the dimness wouldn’t be anything pleasant.
“And I won’t be able to see you anymore.”
“You’ll see me.”
“No,” Satoru denies impatiently. “I mean your inside. It’s all mangled and strange and—and bloody, and different from everybody else. I like it.”
This kid.
Yuuji counts his breaths—one, two, three—and opens his eyes, looking to the sky.
“You’ll still see that too,” Yuuji utters slowly, not looking at him. His heart is in his throat. “Just in tiny doses. And eventually, you won’t need to blindfold yourself so much.”
He feels Satoru get close enough to hang on his arm, his body a warm weight against him.
“Okay,” Satoru agrees quietly, peering up at him with eyes Yuuji can’t make himself meet at the moment. “But you’ll put in on every day. And take it off, too.”
“Alright.”
“Every day.”
Yuuji hums. “Every day I can.”
Until he begins his formal education as a sorcerer, that is. Yuuji knows himself. Watching this kid grow closer into the man that taught and protected him won’t be good for his psyche, and he’s grown selfish enough to put that before anything else. The only company he’ll ever have is himself. He doesn’t want to look at this kid and see a body split in half.
“Fine.”
“Good.”
“Fine,” Satoru repeats petulantly, and after a moment, he tugs on Yuuji’s arm.
Yuuji makes the mistake of looking.
Satoru stares at him intently for a long moment, face blank of all emotion. The grin that suddenly overtakes it is excruciatingly familiar, and that, more than anything else, is what makes Yuuji lose his breath.
He might be in over his head, but that’s okay. He’s used to it, especially when it comes to Gojo Satoru. He just needs to remember the ropes, like riding a bike after a long time. He’ll be fine. Satoru will be fine.
“Good!” Satoru exclaims cheerfully, and Yuuji lets himself be dragged back into the house. He hopes Nobara isn’t there waiting to rub his defeat on his face. “Come on, I’ll show you my room! Wait, no, I’ll show you your room! I chose it for you ages ago.”